Between Light & Shadow
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 13th story in Ramble On 'verse series. Set S7. Bobby's death hits Dean hard at a time when he can hardly find a good reason to keep fighting. When Ellie joins the brothers at Whitefish, the past intrudes unexpectedly, an old unresolved case that raises more spectres than one. No slash. No spoilers. Feedback appreciated.
1. Chapter 1 Denial

**Between Shadows and Light**

* * *

 _Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o'er-wrought heart and bids it break_

 _~ William Shakespeare_

* * *

 **Chapter 1 Denial**

 _ **Albany, New York**_

The pickup was almost empty, the storage room behind her, almost full. Ellie wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her wrist and picked up another box, sliding it along the tail gate until she had its weight, then turning and carrying it into the storage room, stacking it on top of the boxes already there.

The buzz of her phone, sitting on a nearby stack of boxes, gave her a good excuse to stop and she picked it up with a sigh of relief, stretching one arm above her head to ease the tightness of her shoulders and back.

"Hello?"

"Ellie? Bobby's dead."

Dean's voice was husky, the words almost slurred. Ellie leaned against the pile of boxes next to her, her tiredness forgotten at the pain she could hear too clearly across the miles between them.

"I'm so sorry, Dean," she said, not sure if the sudden tightness in her chest was for the old man or for the man on the end of the line, who'd loved him like a father.

"Uh, we're at Whitefish," he said, his voice cracking a little. "Could you … can you … uh … can you get here?"

"Yeah. I'm leaving now." She heard the line cut out and closed the phone slowly.

Bobby. Dead. She couldn't make herself believe it, not yet. It was a little under eight years since she'd first met Bobby Singer, by accident, both of them hunting for the same piece of information from the same medieval professor, and long before she'd met the brothers or had even heard much about them.

She'd passed things on to Bobby over the years, information and artefacts, books and sometimes just rumours. It hadn't really been until Dean had gone to live with the Braedens that she'd spent a lot of time with the older hunter. They'd both needed to talk to someone about the man they loved, with someone who knew him. Someone who'd understand that need to talk.

From others, directly or peripherally involved in their business, she'd heard things about Bobby Singer that'd surprised her, at first. Contradictory things she'd later realised Bobby had fostered, rumours and innuendo and outright crap. In the end, it'd been his obsession with knowing that had been their real bond. Knowing what the patterns meant and knowing the history and knowing how history repeated itself. Just knowing.

Dean … her face screwed up a little at the thought of him trying to face this loss.

He'd turned to Bobby after his father had gone. Had looked to him and relied on him and had loved him fiercely. He'd be devastated, she thought worriedly. More than devastated. She bit her lip as she realised he would find some way to blame himself for it, certain that unspoken need for punishment was still there.

For a second, she let herself imagine what his life – and her life – was going to be like without the taciturn hunter in it. Grief flowered then, rising up through her chest and into her throat, tightening both. Bobby'd had his regrets, more than a few. She knew some of them. They'd been shared over the years, over bottles and talk that'd lasted till dawn, reluctantly to begin with, then more openly. She tipped her head back, swallowing against the full feeling in her throat, hoping and sending out a prayer to whoever was listening that he'd been able to let all of them go at the last.

Taking a deep breath and forcing the bands of too-tight muscles around her chest to loosen, she wiped impatiently at the tears on her cheeks. It was going to take days to drive to Montana and she was wasting time.

She tucked the phone into her pocket, and turned back to the truck. There were only two boxes left in the tray, and she reached in, lifting one on top of the other and dragging them off. The combined weight was almost more than she could manage, and for a second, she swayed under them, finding her balance and calling up a little more from her reserves, distantly aware that over the last few months she hadn't been looking after herself nearly as well as she should've been.

She gripped the lower box hard and carried them into the storage room, setting them down on top of the others. It took a few moments for the tremble in her muscles to dissipate and she leaned against the pile, telling herself that a decent breakfast would solve the problem. Getting her stuff out of Richmond, chasing down a rugaru that'd come to maturity in South Carolina, driving back across three states to meet Dean and Sam at the tail end of a job they'd had in western Missouri, and then returning to upper New York State to finish moving her stuff to the storage unit had taken its toll. She'd been operating on takeout food and three hours of sleep out of every twenty-four for weeks now. She ran the roller door down and fastened the padlocks through the two hasps.

There were a few more things she'd been planning on doing, but they could wait, she thought as she lifted the tail gate and locked it into place. She'd been living out of a bag for the past few weeks; everything she needed was already in the pickup and she could buy anything she didn't have on the way.

Getting into the cab, she started the engine, listening as the '91 Dodge Ram V8 engine rumbled into life. Like the regular maintenance she did on her vehicles, it was a habit she'd acquired over the years, that moment of listening to the engine when it started, relaxing when it hit all the right notes. She couldn't remember when she'd started doing it, only that having a vehicle that was reliable was as important as making sure her weapons were clean and working smoothly, and, she considered, making a face at herself in the rearview mirror, making sure she was fit and healthy.

On the passenger side, a map laid open. She picked it up and did some mental calculations. At least two and a half days to Whitefish. The pickup wasn't economical, but it was useful. And inconspicuous; plain white, well-dusted, it looked like any one of the millions of similar farm or work vehicles. Studying the map for a moment, she memorised the main roads and her exits, then pulled out, and headed for the interstate.

* * *

 _ **Thirty hours later. Whitefish, Montana**_

Sam stood by the window of the cabin, staring outside, listening to the cold silence that filled the room. Mostly it was coming from his brother. Dean hadn't moved much from the sofa since they'd burned Bobby's body on the pyre. In the last four days, they hadn't spoken more than a dozen words to each other. He understood the silence. There wasn't anything to say. Not to each other. Bobby had been there when their father had sacrificed himself for his oldest son. He'd been there when Dean had made his deal and when the hellhounds had come. It'd been Bobby's place Dean'd gone to when he'd been pulled out of Hell, and it'd been Bobby who'd somehow regained enough control of his body to turn a knife on himself when Meg'd ordered the demon possessing him to kill Dean.

The view outside started to blur and he blinked, forcing himself to breathe past the sore and aching obstruction in his throat, leaning against the counter. He couldn't think of a single thing he could say that would make it any better. More easily understood.

Luck ran out, their father used to tell them. Roman had made the shot at night, with a running target, in the seconds it'd taken Bobby to get into the van and close the door. A one in a million shot. But sometimes, luck ran out.

* * *

Dean stared at nothing, his mind engaged in its own brand of torture as the grief swelled. He wanted to sleep, to forget for a while but when he closed his eyes, all he saw were the people he'd lost, and razoring pain would bring him to his feet, to pace restlessly, anger and anguish battling for possession. After a while, he gave up on the idea of sleep, sitting on the couch instead, not even trying to make sense of the thoughts and memories and emotions that washed through him, bucketing and jostling and cascading like rapids in a mountain river.

 _Okay, son, don't worry, go back to the room with Rufus, and I'll find your daddy …_ sure, inside the barrel there are grooves cut, like little hills and valleys, which make it spin when it's pushed through by the charge _… Dean, you still want to help me pull apart an engine? …_ so don't be clomping your great feet hard onto the ground, step soft, watch out for the ground cover, try and be as quiet as you can _… you're not giving them a chance to be themselves, John. You could leave them here for a week or so if you've got to be doing something, they're doing all right here …_ yeah, well, what can I say? John just has that effect on people _…_

Inside, somewhere down deep, something was howling. He couldn't let it out. Letting it out wouldn't help. He didn't know how to let go, didn't even know how to accept that the man was gone. And mixed in with his grief, was anger, a fury that burned deep and hot, for the thing that had killed him. He couldn't untangle that rage from the grief. And he wanted the rage, needed it. Without it, facing the levis would be a much harder prospect. An impossible prospect.

 _Your dad was a strong man, Dean, stronger than most. But he made a lot of mistakes over the years, mostly with you …_ what did you do!? … have you got that low of an opinion of yourself? Are you that screwed in the head?! _…_ _your chest was ribbons, your insides were slop. And you've been buried four months. Even if you could slip out of hell and back into your meat suit ..._ I'll use my game leg and kick your friggin' ass! Yeah, you better run! _…_

The memories wouldn't shut down and they wouldn't shut up. He'd been aware, for a long time now, that when his father had died, it'd been Bobby who'd filled the place where he'd been. The realisation had dawned very slowly that Bobby'd been more – had been the father that he'd wanted, the one who was always there. He'd spent his life doing everything possible to please John Winchester, but his father's obsession with hunting, with revenge, had always taken priority over his sons, whether he'd meant it to or not. And him and Sam … they'd both known it, both felt it. Bobby had been the one to throw a ball around with, to listen to their problems, who dropped everything to come when they asked for help.

 _Look, I get it wasn't easy. But that's life! And it's as close to happiness as I've ever seen a hunter get. It ain't like I wanted to lie to you, son. But you were out, Dean …_

He ducked his head, feeling that shock again, that aching disbelief when he'd realised Bobby didn't know him, even after all they'd been through, even after all Bobby'd done for him. He hadn't been out, he'd been in Hell's waiting room, dying inside, with nowhere else to go, seeing the years stretch out ahead of him, filled with lies and a loneliness he'd only slowly come to recognise as being born of the pretence of being someone he wasn't. Trying to be something he wasn't.

 _Now, you find your reasons to get back in the game. I don't care if it's love or spite or a ten-dollar bet. I've been to enough funerals. I mean it. You die before me, and I'll kill you …_

He took a deep breath, trying to relax the muscles that kept contracting against every fucking memory. He couldn't deal with it but he could let it wash through him, he told himself. Let it not hit so hard every goddamned second.

Behind his closed lids, they paraded past again, the people he'd loved and lost … his mother, his father, Ash and Pamela, Ellen and Jo, Lisa and Ben, Anna, Rufus, Cas and now Bobby … people who had helped him, helped him and Sam … people who had been their support system … people who had helped –

He straightened up slowly. All of the people who helped them. And now, there was only a couple of people who fit that category left … and only one of them that he couldn't stand to lose.

The fear that shot through him, icing his veins, launched him off the sofa, his legs tingling and prickling with pins and needles from not being used for awhile. He saw his brother, standing by the small kitchen's window and snapped, "Where was Ellie the last time she called?"

Sam turned to look at him, his brow furrowing up. "Uh, Michigan, I think. Why?"

"How many friends do we have left, Sam? Who've we got now to go for help?"

Sam frowned, thinking about it. "There's Frank?"

"Frank isn't a friend. He's one step from the padded cell," Dean said sharply. "Everyone who ever helped us is dead, Sam. _Everyone_." He walked across the room, head down and staring at the floor, his brows knotted together. They'd tracked them to Riverside, had known the car, known the room. What if they'd found her, on the road, at a fill up, alone? Vulnerable? "We're running and hiding. We got no base, no nothing. It won't take long for them to find us here, and then we'll be on the run again."

"What're you saying?" Sam shook his head. "That we're being targeted? Dean, c'mon, the levis weren't even around last year."

Dean shook his head impatiently. "No. Right. I know. But –" He stopped, rubbing a hand over his face. The back of his neck was itching, prickling with the anxiety he could feeling churning away in his stomach. "I mean, there's got to be some reason everyone we were close to is dead."

Sam's stared at him uncertainly. "Dean, all our friends – our family – everyone we've lost were in the life, Dean. That's all it is."

Dean's shoulders slumped. Sam was right. She was in the life. Maybe that was just a matter of time as well.

* * *

 _ **I-90W, Montana**_

Rubbing her eyes with one hand as she peered through the rain at the sign, Ellie could just make out the letters as she sped by. Bozeman. Ten miles. She nodded tiredly. She could get some coffee there and send a message.

The rain had been with her for the last two hundred miles. She was getting sick of the sound of the wipers across the windshield, sick of the hiss under the tyres, sick of the grey skies and chilled air.

The trip was never-ending. Too much coffee, too much anxiety over every small delay and looking at her watch hadn't helped, only reminding her that she was still too far away.

Grief had hit a few times, triggered by small recollections that seemed to burst into her mind, involuntarily and unwelcomed; once by the sight of a man in a grimy, grease-covered baseball cap at a fill-up in Indiana; another by a laid-back song on the radio. She wasn't sure if she was getting through it, or if trying to deal in incremental dribs and drabs was making it worse. The driving helped, keeping her attention on something other than her memories, but she'd had to pull over a few times, tears coming without warning, just there and blinding her, indistinguishable from the droplets that smeared her windshield between wipes.

 _He wasn't like any kid I'd known_. Another memory of the old man's voice, gruff and a little slurred from the whiskey. In the book-strewn and dust-covered living room, the firelight had lit up one side of Bobby's face in gold, catching the russet in his beard, outlining his lashes. The other side was shadowed in ochre, his hat pushed back off his forehead. The rest of the room had been in varying shades of darkness, curtains drawn against the winter chill and every now and then, a smattering of sleet would hit the glass. _He was quiet, you know, 'cept with his brother, but by God, he was determined. Nothing got past him and he never gave up on anything._

That had been the winter of 2010. Dean had been living in Cicero for the last eight months. Sam had been hunting with his grandfather and cousins, although she hadn't found out about that until much later. She'd stopped in at the salvage yard with two books Bobby'd asked her about; an angelology written by the Church in the fourteenth century and a Georgian herbalist's manual. A third book, written in Japanese and detailing the history of a sorcerer from that land, accompanied a bottle of Elijah Craig, wrapped with a red ribbon. She'd hoped to get there on Bobby's birthday, but the developing weather had put her back a day. Bobby hadn't seemed to mind.

 _I should'a had it out with John, but the one time I tried – well, guess you heard about that?_ She had. Dean had told her about the last time he and Sam had stayed with Bobby when they'd still been kids. Bobby had looked at her over the rim of his glass and shaken his head. _It was the wrong time, tha's all,_ he'd said _. Bill, and then Ellen … John, he – he just couldn't handle anything else. I kicked meself for weeks after, never mind what he said to me, I could see he couldn't take it but I jes kept pushing. Dean needed someone to step in, you know_ , he'd gone on, eyes closing with his memories. _Needed someone to tell him he wasn't expendable. Christ, Ellie, I made some mistakes. With Karen. With John. With Dean. I can't undo them, can't fix what I broke._ He'd looked up at her, his eyes wide and filled with tears. _I couldn't talk to him about Hell … I was too afraid. 'Fraid I'd make it worse, trying to push him. I thought he'd close up and disappear, like his dad did. I was so damned glad you did, girl. Someone had to. He needed to get it out._

Blinking impatiently, she dragged in a deeper breath against that memory,. Neither of them had talked about where Dean was at that time or what he was doing. Sometimes, she'd felt as if the two of them were mourning Dean's passing, not just trying to find a way to deal with him being alive but not around.

Two lanes over, a truck blared its airhorn and she started, fingers tightening on the wheel. Another few minutes and she could stop, she thought. A chance to stretch her legs, freshen up, grab some hot food, fresh coffee and then the last push up into the mountains.

* * *

 _ **Whitefish, Montana**_

"Where the hell is she?" Dean looked out the window at the gathering darkness. "The text said she'd be about five hours, and that was seven hours ago."

Sam looked up from his book. "Maybe she got a flat, or ran out of gas. Stop worrying, she's perfectly capable of dealing with whatever it is."

Neither of them mentioned the possibility that she'd been tracked, attacked and was lying, half-eaten somewhere between Bozeman and the cabin.

Dean remained by the window, the tumbler of whiskey forgotten on the counter beside him, hands shoved into his pockets. Just because Sam hadn't said it, and he hadn't said it, didn't mean it hadn't happened, just that way.

* * *

He was still standing there twenty minutes later when he saw the sweep of the headlights against the trees near the end of the drive. He moved to the door, picking up the shotgun, now loaded with a mixture of salt, borax and iron shot, and waited.

Sam looked up when he heard the engine, dropping his book on the arm of the chair. He walked to the window and picked up the pump action, standing to one side of the glass.

The truck's engine died and the door opened. The light spilling from the cabin windows lit a little of the yard in front, and both Sam and Dean saw it catch her hair in a blaze of copper as Ellie swung around with her bag over her shoulder. Dean put the shotgun down and picked up his switchblade, opening the door as she walked up the steps.

She looked at him, her gaze dropping to the knife in his hand, and she let her bag fall to the porch boards, rolling up the sleeve on her right arm and offering it to him. Meeting her eyes, he made a small incision along the muscle just below the elbow, glancing down as red blood spilled from it. He took the dressing from his pocket and ripped the sterilised packing open with his teeth, folding it gently over the cut and taping it down.

Both turned as Sam stepped through the doorway, a small bag of salt in one hand, a silver flask in the other. He tipped a little salt on Ellie's held-out palm, watched her lick it off, and offered her the flask. The holy water gurgled in the narrow neck as she drank a mouthful.

"Sorry." Dean's mouth twisted in a rueful grimace.

"Can't be too sure," she said, brushing off the apology. Her gaze moved to Sam. "How're you doing, Sam?"

"Been better, but we're still alive," he said, with a shrug. "You alright?"

"About the same."

"I'll, uh, let you two …" Sam turned around and walked back into the house.

Lifting a hand, she brushed her fingertips lightly over Dean's cheek and took a step closer. "You look like hell."

He ducked his head for a second, tilting it as he looked back at her from under his brows. "Yeah? You look beautiful."

"Been a rough one." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah." His half-smile vanished and he looked past her to the car. "Where were you?"

"Upstate New York," she told him, slipping her arms around him. "Got a storage unit there and shoved everything into it until I can find something better."

Dean calculated the distances and time and exhaled against her hair. "Dammit, Ellie, that's some haul."

"Hey," she said, tucking her cheek against his chest as his arms came around her. "You ask, you get."

"I didn't think –"

"Dean," she said, leaning back a little against his hold. "We're not counting cost here, okay? How are you?"

For a moment, he could feel it all, bulging at his battered and rapidly wearing down internal walls, tearing at him. He closed his eyes and tightened his hold on her, forcing it all back down again. He'd wanted her here, needed her to be here but he wasn't ready to let it out. Not yet.

"Still standing," he offered a moment later, turning them both slightly and taking a step toward the door.

* * *

Ellie glanced around the cabin's living area as they walked in, noting the wall at the rear, half-covered with possible leads and directions for the leviathans. Dick Roman's photograph was prominently displayed in a variety of poses that featured his shark-like grin and a couple of them had a few well-placed holes in them. She turned away and looked over the rest of the open room, eyes narrowing a little at the dust that covered the horizontal surfaces of the furniture and the dishes that were overtaking the small kitchen counter and table.

Keeping a clean environment wouldn't have been on either of their minds, she thought, turning back to look from Sam to Dean. "What happened?"

Dean made a frustrated gesture and turned away, walking out of the room. A moment later, the sound of running water and clanking of pipes came from somewhere in the back.

"We got a lead," Sam said, his expression uncomfortable as he dragged his attention back to her and gestured at the table between living area and kitchen. "In Jersey. Thought we were well back from the front line, but it turned out we weren't. Bobby was grabbed and when we tried to get him out, Roman shot him."

Under the matter-of-fact explanation there was a wealth of pain and regret and she wondered if either of them had talked to the other about it, or if both had locked away their emotions. Following Sam to the table, she asked, "What were you chasing? And why was Roman there?"

"Started out with something taking people in the Jersey woods," Sam explained, dropping into a chair and staring at the laptop sitting open on the table top. "It was something. The bigmouths, they're doing something to the food –"

"Additives?" Ellie asked. She pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table. "Roman Enterprises just went on a big buying spree, all kinds of food stuff from growing to processing, packaging and delivery."

Sam nodded. "Looked like they were trialling it through a chain restaurant. Biggersons." He ran his hand through his hair, the gesture sharp with frustration. "What we could see of it, it makes people dozy. Really dozy. But there's a small percentage that go the other way."

"What other way?"

"The thing we went there to find was – had been – human," Sam told her. "Bobby and me –" He looked down at the table for a moment. "Uh, Bobby and me, we did an autopsy on the body. Adrenal gland was huge, way bigger than it should've been, Bobby said."

She thought about that. "So, the desired effect is to reduce hormonal and metabolic activity, damp it all down, but in some of the population it has the opposite effect, revving it all up." She lifted a questioning brow at him. "Any idea of the percentage?"

"Nothing accurate," Sam said. "But we saw three, out of a town of about three thousand."

"Dean sampled it," he added, his face screwing up at the memory. "Took him about twelve hours to sleep off a couple of sandwiches, and he was stoned – didn't give a crap what was happening when he was under the influence."

"Soylent Green," Ellie said, the association coming to her immediately. Sam nodded.

"Yeah, that's what it looks like."

"That might work for western countries with plenty of wealth and no limits on consumption," she commented diffidently. "It's not going to have the same effect on the world's biggest populations."

Shrugging, Sam said, "Maybe they're not worried about a timeline. If they get a big enough base, introducing it to other countries isn't going to be a problem."

"Probably not," Ellie agreed, rubbing her fingertips over her brow tiredly. "So why was Roman there?"

"We're not sure, but I got the impression he was just keeping his finger on the pulse."

"Hands on," she remarked, half to herself. "That's interesting."

"You think he's the original?"

"Yeah, I do," she told him, glancing around as a door slammed. "He's copied Roman to get as much control as he can. I would think he'll aim higher as soon as the company stuff is settled and bedded down and running smoothly."

"Bobby gave us a set of numbers, before he died," Sam said, gesturing at the wall of the room. "Five digits, no idea what they're relating to."

"Five?" Ellie turned in the chair to look at them. "That's not helpful."

"No, we gave Frank fifteen thousand to get to work on them, but we haven't heard anything yet," he told her.

Ellie looked back at him. "Whatever Roman's doing, he's slotted himself into a place where he's going to be hard to get to –"

"He's not untouchable," Dean grated as he walked back into the room, crossing to the fridge and pulling out three beers. He waved a bottle at Ellie questioningly and she nodded. "He wants to get his hands dirty and we got close, but he – he was stronger than the others. Borax burned but it didn't knock him down, not for long enough."

"A stronger solution might change that," Ellie said, taking the beer as he passed it to her. "Or internally delivered, instead of externally."

A cold grin appeared on Dean's face. "That, I like."

"I've been looking for that spell," Ellie said. "The one you said the witch used in Indiana."

"Any luck?" Sam asked, taking his beer and opening it. "We couldn't find anything."

"Well, I found out where it came from, but it's not going to be any help," Ellie told him. "Needs a witch of a certain amount of power – it's not something anyone can do."

Leaning back in the chair, she closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the hours of driving hit her. "There has to be a reason for them not increasing as well."

"What d'you mean?" Dean asked.

"Well," she said, opening her eyes and straightening up to look at him. "They're pretty much organised, they've infiltrated the power bases they need and they've gone proactive on securing their food supplies. So why aren't they multiplying?"

Dean frowned, turning to look at Sam. "They make copies, don't they?"

Sam's brow was furrowed. "She's right. At the moment, they've only been making copies of humans. They haven't been increasing their numbers."

"Do we know that?" Dean asked, his face screwing up at the thought. "We don't even know how many Cas was carrying around!"

Sam shook his head. "If they'd been reproducing, we'd know about it," he said.

"Well, maybe they can't," Dean argued.

"Or," Ellie suggested, her nose wrinkling up as she yawned. "Maybe they can't – yet."

She put the beer down and leaned back from the table, reaching for her pack. "Almost forgot," she mumbled, rummaging through the contents.

Pulling out a wrapped package, she tossed it onto the table between the brothers. "You must be nearly tapped out by now?"

Sam glanced at his brother and pulled the wrapping off. Six bound packs of bills spilled out and Dean's brows shot up as he realised they were hundreds.

"The hell's this?" he asked, looking at Ellie.

"Operating funds," she replied, covering another yawn with her hand. "My contribution to keeping you two on the road."

"Ellie, there's –" Sam fanned one of the packs, counting the cash. "– what? Thirty thousand here?"

"Well, Frank doesn't come cheap, does he?" she asked, getting to her feet and looking around. "I don't mean to be a party pooper, but I'd kill for a hot shower and a few hours of sleep?"

"Uh, yeah," Dean said, dragging his gaze from the pile of money on the table and getting up. "Come on."

"'Night, Sam," she said, following him up the stairs.

"'Night, Ellie, and – thanks," Sam called back, stacking the packs together.

Dean walked up the stairs and stopped when they reached the door of the room under the gable.

"There's a bathroom, through there," he said, looking down at her, seeing the purple shadows around her eyes under the brighter light. "You alright?"

"Just a bit punchy from the drive," Ellie said, peering past him into the room. "This was Rufus' place?"

He nodded. The upstairs consisted of only one bedroom, built under the roof, with a small bathroom off it. Downstairs had another bedroom and a more utilitarian bath, tucked in the back. When they'd moved in, Bobby'd taken the upstairs room, Sam the back room and he'd been sleeping on the couch. Since the old hunter had died, he hadn't been up here.

Following Ellie into the room, he looked around. There was a queen-sized bed in the centre, the door to the bath on the right. A couple of cupboards and chests of drawers were against the full-height walls, a long, low bookcase spanned the room where the roof sloped down. Like the first floor, the timbers had been lined and painted, a long while ago. It looked okay, he thought.

Ellie had dropped her backpack on the floor by the bed. She walked to the bathroom and pushed the door open, flicking on the light. Beyond her, he could see the gleam of white porcelain, the corner of a vanity and a glass shower screen.

She turned back to him. "I won't be long."

Nodding, he watched her turn back to the bathroom, stepping inside and closing the door. His head was still spinning from the wad of cash she'd dumped on them. He went back down the stairs.

"We got someplace to put that?" he asked his brother, gesturing at the money as he stopped by the table and reached for his beer.

"Yeah, Rufus has a safe in the basement," Sam said, glancing at him.

"You don't look that surprised." Dean looked at him accusingly.

Sam shrugged. "Ellie said something about it last time we saw her," he said, waving his hand apologetically. "Her folks were pretty loaded, apparently. Her aunt too. She lives off the inheritance, mostly investments she said."

"What?"

"You never asked her about it?" Sam's brow arched upward sceptically.

Dean scowled at the table. "No – uh, no. I thought she was like us, just scamming and scrapin' by."

He looked up at Sam's half-strangled snort.

"C'mon, Dean, she flies back and forth to Europe, stays at better places than we do – you didn't notice that?"

"I –" He stopped, looking away. He hadn't thought about it. He remembered the conversation about hotels in Manhattan and shook his head. "I don't know. I just didn't think about."

"Well, she's got plenty, so don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Sam tilted his head a little, looking up as the sound of running water from upstairs stopped.

"You ready to call it a night?"

Dean nodded, finishing the beer and lobbing it across the room into the trash can by the fridge.

"I get you can't talk to me," Sam said, not looking at him as he picked up the money and turned away. "But talk to her, okay?"

Watching Sam walking toward the basement door, Dean let out a soft exhale. It wasn't that he couldn't talk to his brother, he thought sourly. He didn't think he'd be able to talk much to Ellie either. His head was a mess and he was tired and the only thing he really wanted was to lie down next to her, absorb the warmth and comfort she gave him and sleep.

He turned for the stairs and walked up them slowly. Pushing open the bedroom door, he stopped as he saw her, sitting on the edge of the bed and towelling her hair. He closed the door, head ducking as he felt his tiredness evaporate at the sight, a flush of heat rising through him.

Ellie looked around, combing through her hair with her fingers. "Hey. I left you some hot."

Dean stood by the door, arousal momentarily overwhelmed by a disproportionate reaction to the simple statement. The tension he'd felt, knotting his stomach and the muscles of his shoulders and neck for the last few days, dissolved abruptly, swept aside or pushed out by an almost shocking feeling of peace and complete familiarity.

He walked across the room, waving a hand toward the bathroom. "Won't be long."

"Take your time."

The bathroom was steamy and warm, and he stripped fast, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor as he turned the water on.

How was it she made wherever they were feel like that, he wondered absently, grabbing the soap. Just those tiny little moments of knowing him? Details he'd hardly noticed with anyone else? He'd gotten into the habit of showering before Lisa in Cicero, when he'd found she never left enough hot water for him. It hadn't bothered him that much, just another little thing, really, like the eggs … and the toothpaste … and the laundry …

He turned around and let the flow pour over his neck and back, revelling in the heat, no tension he could feel in any part of him, but the sensation hypnotically soothing anyway.

The eleven months he'd spent in the little house in Indiana had been full of contradictions, he thought a few moments later, reluctantly turning off the water and stepping out of the glass-framed cubicle. There'd been a kind of a peace there; knowing what he was doing every day, routine and comfort and nothing out of the ordinary, but it wasn't the right kind of peace. It didn't let him be who he was and he'd spent a lot of time pretending to be someone he wasn't.

Grabbing a towel from the rail, he dried off as he walked to the vanity. He'd felt empty there, he admitted, lifting a hand and wiping the condensation from the mirror. Staring at the smeary reflection looking back at him, he remembered the way Lisa's eyes had cut away when he'd tried to tell her about parts of his life, remembered the feeling that she'd rather not know. The things he'd had to tell her, had wanted to tell someone, he'd thought she'd understood.

He'd been shocked by what she'd said to him about Sam when she'd called and the spell of Veritas had been on him. Shocked and, later on, disappointed. It'd turned out she'd listened to him spill his guts and had thought he was an idiot for sacrificing himself for his brother.

He wrapped the towel around his hips and pushed those memories aside. He never should've gone there, he knew. Should've ignored his promise to Sam. He picked up the razor and shaving cream, squirting the cream onto his palm and wiping it thinly over his cheeks and jaw and down his throat. He wasn't going to escape from his past, drawing the razor's edge across his skin, turning on the tap and rinsing it, tapping it against the edge of the sink. Or from who he was.

In the last few months, the way he'd felt about that had been swinging a hundred and eighty degrees, north to south, part of him wanting to get back the clarity he could still remember having about his life; another part wanting to get as far from hunting, and, he acknowledged heavily, the way he saw himself now, as he could.

He bent to wash the last of the cream from his face, fingertips automatically assessing the closeness of the shave, then straightened, turning off the water and reaching for the hand towel as he looked back at the mirror. The man who stared back was older, harder, he thought. The guy he'd been, before Hell, confident in what he did, what he could do, looking for simple things and easy fun, scared most of the time that he wasn't strong enough and hiding it under a rapid-fire mouth and a give-'em-hell-attitude, that guy'd gone completely.

Ellie'd been right. Bobby'd been right. His head wasn't in the game, and he'd get himself killed, or worse, someone he cared about, if he couldn't figure a way to get himself straight.

Tossing the towel on the side of the sink, Dean turned for the door, hitting the lights as he came out. The lamp on the nightstand on his side of the bed was lit, and he looked at Ellie, lying under the covers, the lamp's light brightening the long coppery spill of her hair over the pillows. He thought she was sleeping, but she opened her eyes as he walked over, propping herself on one elbow.

He dropped the towel by the bed and slid in beside her. "Thought you'd be out for the count by now."

"Not a chance," she told him, her eyes searching his as he settled himself. "How're you doing? Really?"

If anyone else'd asked that question, he knew he'd've clammed up tight, not wanting to think about it, much less talk. He reached behind to readjust the pillow behind his head, not sure if it was the way he felt about her that made a difference, or if it was the way she was that'd gotten down deep inside him and made him feel that way. "I'm, uh, numb, I guess."

"That doesn't sound good," Ellie commented, wriggling closer to him. "Why haven't you talked to Sam about it? He needs it as much as you do."

Looking away, Dean shrugged. "I don't know. I can't."

"Trust?"

Yeah, he thought. It wasn't back. Not even close. "Probably," he told her, rolling onto his side to look at her. "That's been – a-a-a roller coaster with Sam for a long time."

"Because of Ruby."

"Mostly, yeah," he agreed more readily. He'd thought he's made his peace about the choices his brother had made but the angel's more recent betrayal had brought a lot of it back up again. "And Cas. And the other stuff."

"Can you talk about Bobby?" she asked, her voice softening.

He leaned back, closing his eyes. Down deep, down where it was just him, all that was a mess, churning and circling and tangled and he had no idea of how to begin to talk about it. Thinking about it for days hadn't helped.

"Not yet," he said, when the silence had gone on too long. He opened his eyes and looked at her apologetically. "Sometime. But not now."

He reached out, running his fingers over her cheek, her jawline and down the long curve of her neck, heat building as he watched her eyes widen slightly, her lips part. "I know you're tired."

She shivered as his fingers slipped over her collarbone, lightly down the side of her breast, smiling a little at her reactions. "Not that tired," she told him, voice wry.

The brush of her mouth on his was unbearably soft and tentative, and a familiar tremble ran through him, igniting his nerves at the charge that made the lightest touch feel like the belt of a high voltage line. Wrapping an arm around her and pulling her against him, his response was immediate, needful with desire, goaded on by an overload of emotion. At this minute, he wanted nothing more than to lose himself in the way it felt, that sweet, sweet ride, lose himself in her and wipe everything else out.

For a moment, the kiss, hungry and demanding on both sides did just that. The past disappeared along with the future and he felt entirely himself, immersed in sensation.

Seconds later that feeling disappeared completely. He felt it vanish, desire turning to ash, his arousal gone, leaving a yearning ache and a tightness in his throat and chest and the shocking prick behind his eyes. He lifted his head, his arms closing more tightly around her as he felt her surprise. Ducking his head, he pressed his cheek against her neck, feeling his heart rate drop, his breathing slow. Sensation fizzled out along his nerve endings, drowned by a welling emotion that seemed to be sucking out every bit of energy he had.

"Shi-s-s-sorry," he managed to get out, not able to explain what'd happened or why.

Ellie shifted her position under him, and he felt a gentle exhale against his temple. "You can't keep ignoring your feelings, Dean," she told him, her voice very low. "You can't pretend they're not there."

He shook his head, unable to get anything out past the obstruction in his throat. It wasn't that. He didn't think he was trying to ignore the grief that thrummed and pulsed right the way through him, not just for Bobby but everyone he'd lost, everyone he'd failed to keep safe over the years. But he couldn't let it go either.

"Th-that's not – it," he finally forced out, sucking in a breath and easing himself off her as her arms came around him. He realised she could feel the rigidity in his body, muscles contracted and hard as he fought against the emotions that were rolling through and over the top of him.

The last tears he'd shed had been for his brother, gone down into a hole with the devil, and, he'd thought at the time, never coming back. Since then, his feelings had battered and bludgeoned him, but he'd kept them inside, neither willing nor able to find the easiest release for them, afraid of the power he could sense in them. If he gave in and let them go, he wasn't sure there'd be anything left.


	2. Chapter 2 Anger

**Chapter 2 Anger**

* * *

Light filled the upstairs room, flooding through the dormer windows to either side of the bed as the sun crested the mountain behind the cabin. It pierced his eyelids, prying him from the restful cocoon of dark silence, prodding insistently even as he tried to turn away from it.

 _What happened to the damned curtains?_

The thought brought wakefulness closer and Dean opened his eyes irritably, finding himself viewing the pine lining of a sloping ceiling.

 _The hell –?_

Warm skin. A gentle exhale. A vaguely summery scent, tantalisingly familiar. Turning his head, he saw Ellie lying beside him and conscious memory returned, reminding him of why he was sleeping in the upstairs bedroom, instead of waking on the couch downstairs. A very faint ache in his balls brought another memory. First time for everything, he thought sourly, but it'd come as an unwelcomed shock.

He listened to her breathing, soft and even. She was still soundly asleep, not even stirring with his movement. Two and a half days on the road, he thought, inching onto his side and propping himself on his elbow to look down at her. She'd told him she wasn't counting the cost, but he knew what kind of effort it took, a haul like that. Knew it intimately. He couldn't figure her out, sometimes. Why she did the things she did. If he asked. Or sometimes even if he didn't. Or what it was, he thought, reaching out to slip his fingers under a loose fall of her hair and push it back, she saw in him that made her want to.

At the light touch, she turned slightly toward him, one arm curling over his chest. The brush of her fingertips, even unconsciously, hiked up his internal thermostat, and his lids fluttered shut, jaw muscle popping out a little, resisting the instant and overwhelming impulse to wake her. He wasn't a hundred percent sure it wouldn't end up the same way and he wasn't, he decided, more than a little unwillingly, ready to face either the mental or physical consequences of another round like that. Moving away from her, he leaned over and left a kiss against her bare shoulder. She needed a lot more sleep anyway, he told himself.

The bedroom was cool, but not cold and he walked barefoot to the bathroom, turning on the cold water over the basin, cupping his hands under the flow and dunking his face in it. Restlessness filled him, edged in a steely feeling of frustration and below that, something stronger. Something darker. He twisted the faucet and ran a hand over his face, staring down into the basin.

After Missouri, he'd really believed his despair and the disorienting lack of direction had gone, disarmed by what he'd admitted, dissolved in the sudden but certain feeling he knew exactly what he'd wanted. He'd figured he'd get around to talking to Ellie about it, the next time they found some time together.

Of course, Bobby hadn't been dead then, he reminded himself bitterly, grabbing the hand towel from the hook beside the mirror and swiping at his face.

It was a mess again. Bobby's death. Roman's taunts. The lack of a lead from Frank. Even Ellie's absences, trying to find another base, seemed part of the conspiracy to ensure he couldn't take a step forward, back or even sideways. The inaction … the time to think … the fucking lack of everything was killing him.

Going back to the bedroom, he walked around the end of the bed and grabbed his clothes, looking down at Ellie as he pulled them on, sucking in a deep breath against the temptation to stop what he was doing and crawl back into the bed and go back to sleep beside her. It would be helluva lot more productive than anything else he could think of.

 _It's just I get to this place where I'm okay, and then you show up at our door. You keep doing that, every time I think I'm never gonna see you again. I'm trying to get over you._

The memory bounced into his head, arresting his hand halfway up the zipper of his jeans and Dean stared at the wall, the Battle Creek house coming back to him in Technicolour detail, Lisa standing there in a little black dress, hair and makeup done for an evening out, Ben surly and defiant about his lies.

Ben'd called, disjointed and incoherent, and at Sam's urging, he'd dropped the case he and his brother were working on and had driven from Jersey to Michigan in ten hours, going straight through.

He'd arrived, hopped up on caffeine and too much time at the wheel to think of all the possible reasons something could be wrong only to find the kid had lied to get him there.

" _A date is not an emergency," he'd said to Ben, a lot later._

" _Why can't you just say 'sorry' and come home?" Ben'd asked him, like it was the easiest thing in the world._

Ducking his head, he remembered the heartbreak in Ben's voice and his inability to answer that. Say 'sorry' for being who he was? Apologise for not wanting to keep pretending he was someone else? _Your mom lied to me. She doesn't want me, she wanted something she knew, deep down, never existed_. The words had been on the tip of his tongue and he'd swallowed them with difficulty, trying to address the betrayal the boy'd felt instead.

" _Just because you love someone, doesn't mean you should stick around and screw up their lives"_ , he'd told Ben. _"If I stayed, you'd end up like me."_

But that'd been later. When he'd stood on the threshold and looked at Lisa, it'd felt like a slap, realising Lisa was going out with someone else, someone normal, someone who wasn't called off at a moment's notice to go and deal with the underside of the world. It'd taken most of the drive back to Jersey, on empty highways and through the night, to understand that his reaction hadn't been about Lisa.

After the phone conversation when he'd been in Calumet City, he'd figured they were done. She'd rung maybe a half a dozen times after that, and he'd looked at the number and had thought about calling back, but he never had. He couldn't figure the point of it. He'd told her what he'd done to save Sam and at the time, it'd seemed like she'd understood. It was only under Veritas' influence that he'd found out she hadn't. It'd been too close to what happened with almost everyone else; opening up, trying to make someone understand him, having it thrown back in his face with contempt, or ridicule, or just plain old disbelief.

 _I'm not saying, don't be close to Sam; I'm close to my sister. But if she got killed, I wouldn't bring her back from the dead!_

It hadn't hurt as much as he'd thought it would. He guessed that'd been due to the fact he'd been pretty much scar tissue from one end to the other by then, and the blow had barely penetrated. It'd hurt enough that he hadn't returned her calls, hadn't wanted to talk to her.

Sitting in her living room, he'd been ready to tell her it hadn't been his idea to come back, but when he'd looked at the conflicting expressions flitting over her face, he'd realised she'd known that already. At first, she hadn't mentioned the phone call, and he'd thought maybe she'd forgotten about it. Every word she'd said had been engraved in his mind, but seemed like it hadn't been that important to her. Then she'd raised it, apologising for throwing those things at him, but not for lying about it before and more than a little defensively trying to justify her opinions about the way he and his brother were too close, too co-dependent, too unhealthily tied together … too everything. He hadn't argued about it. He'd agreed with some of what she'd said. What had done the damage was the simple fact that when they'd been together, she hadn't said one fucking word about any of that.

 _What do_ you _want from_ us _?_

He hadn't been able to give her an answer. Hadn't even been able to think of the answer back then. What he'd wanted was what she wasn't and he sure as hell couldn't say that. What he'd wanted was someone he could trust, with all that he was, all that he'd done and all that he'd felt. What he'd wanted, and had put every effort into denying, was the woman who was sleeping in his bed right now.

He looked down at his hands and pulled the zipper up, doing up the button. His heart had start to thump uncomfortably against his ribs and his palms felt slightly greasy.

What he _wanted_ … felt impossible. Something he shouldn't even be thinking about. Things were complicated enough as they were, he didn't need to make them any more so. Still, that want clung to the edges of his mind, ambushing him at unexpected moments.

Looking down at the floor, he picked up his tee shirt, yanking it with unnecessary force over his head.

There never was a time when they weren't neck-deep in crap, he told himself, turning away from the bed to pick up the long-sleeved shirt, dragging it on with a similar, barely-restrained violence. The latest problems were worse in some ways than what'd come before. There had to be a way to gank Roman and get rid of the others, but nothing they'd found was looking the slightest bit optimistic on that score.

He pulled on his socks, leaning against the side of the bed, his gaze flicking unwillingly back to Ellie's sleeping form. He couldn't help imagining the worst that might happen. _Just because you love someone, doesn't mean you should drag them into the line of fire and get them killed_. He couldn't shut that out of his head when she wasn't there. And that, he acknowledged bitterly as he picked up his boots and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him, took his mind out of the game as readily as everything else.

* * *

Downstairs, he could smell coffee brewing. He walked down the staircase slowly, and sat on the bottom step to pull on his boots. At the table, Sam glanced up as he got to his feet and crossed the room, heading for the pot.

"Hey." Sam put down the paper he was looking through, moving the open laptop to make more room on the table top. "How's Ellie?"

"Sleeping." Dean poured himself a cup of coffee and turned around. "She – uh – she drove pretty much non-stop from upstate New York."

Sam's brow wrinkled up and he shook his head. "You two are made for each other."

Dean looked down at his coffee, hoping his reaction to that hadn't shown on his face. He waved a diversionary hand at the table. "What you got?"

"Nothing on the current problem." Sam picked up the paper he'd been reading. "I've still got a few to go through, so there might be something."

"How long's it been since we gave Frank those numbers?" Dean asked, dropping into a chair opposite his brother and swallowing a mouthful of the hot black brew.

"Uh, five days," Sam told him, getting up to refill his cup. He glanced back over his shoulder. "Why?"

"Why hasn't he gotten back to us?"

"Well," Sam said consideringly, putting the glass pot back on the burner. "It's Frank."

It was … Frank, Dean thought. The guy was definitely sporting some defective wiring. Asshole charged like a wounded bull and his delivery was pretty damned questionable. The thought of the money they'd given to Frank – on his say-so with no guarantee of a return – brought back the image of the paper-wrapped bills Ellie had tossed on the table and his brow knitted.

"An' you knew Ellie had money? But you didn't say anything?" Dean asked. He wasn't all that sure of why that was still nagging at him. That Sam'd known and he hadn't? That she was loaded? Enough to chuck thirty gees their way without batting an eyelid?

'Uh … yeah." Sam glanced sideways at Dean at the abrupt change in topic. "She told me a while ago. I didn't mention it because – stupidly – since you two got together, I kind of thought you already knew."

Dean scowled at him. "Do I look like I check out people's financial status?"

"I thought it would've come up, that's all," Sam soothed. "She's worth about four million."

"What!?" Dean's cup hit the table with a bang, coffee sloshing up and dribbling down the sides of the cup. He stared at his brother. "You shitting me?!"

"Uh, nope. That's what she said."

"What the fuck – why t'hell is she hunting? She could be doing … anything!?"

Sam shrugged. "Why the hell are you asking me? I guess she likes doing it. Does that come as such a surprise?"

Dean thought back to a conversation he'd had with her in the heat of a New York summer. _At least I'm doing something that means something, even if only to a few people. I'm not pushing paper or data around in a meaningless round,_ she'd said to him, in the warm, muggy darkness. At the time, he'd understood what she'd meant but he hadn't been able to really relate it back to himself. The devil had been out. The angels had been looking for them. It wasn't the same as the way he'd felt when he'd been younger. The weight of the fucking world had been on him and Sam, and Ellie'd known as well as him what that'd meant.

"You still want to get out of this life?"

For a second, he stared blankly at Sam as the question threw him. Did he? Maybe he did, he considered, belatedly noticing the liquid over his hand and wiping it off on his shirt, but it wasn't like it was a realistic option. Aside from the fact his face and name had been all over the national news for weeks now, he still had a job to do.

"Not much hope of that now," he said, picking up his coffee and swallowing a mouthful.

"You could walk any time, Dean."

Sam was studying him, he could feel the intensity of his little brother's stare against the side of his face.

"No. I can't."

"You were the one who told me that revenge isn't a good reason to be doing this."

Looking up, he frowned. He might've given Sam the impression that he was after Roman's blood because of Bobby's death, back in the hospital, but that'd changed and he thought his brother would've picked up on that in the last few. "This isn't about revenge, alright?" he said, setting the cup down, more carefully this time.

"You sure about that?" Sam asked.

"I want to blow a big hole in Dick, I'm not gonna tell you I don't, but that's not the main issue," Dean told him, aware that he was choosing his words carefully, his voice clipped and forced a little too deep. He took a breath and shook his head. "Cas brought these things out – and then the sonofabitch died."

He didn't think he had to add that he couldn't walk while his brother was still having visions of Hell and the devil, or while the woman he was in love with was still searching for answers to the main problem. Or, he thought, with another internal grimace, while the man he'd considered closer than his father was a pile of ash.

"I'm doing alright, Dean," Sam reiterated, his brow furrowing. "You don't have to worry about me."

"Yeah. Well … no. I'm not worrying about you. I'm worrying about finding a way to get rid of these things and get back to something approximating normal. For us." He looked at the piles of papers on the table. He needed to do something. "How many you been through?"

"That pile." Sam gestured to the smaller of the two piles and picked up a handful from the larger, passing them over. "You want to find a job? Start reading."

"Now? What about breakfast?"

"Later." Sam typed in a new search on the laptop, ignoring the aggravated rustle of the newspaper across the table, and concentrated on the results.

Dean watched him for a moment, over the top of the newspaper. It wasn't about revenge, he thought again. He wanted – he needed – some kind of a life back before he could even consider the things that'd hit them both in the last few months.

It was about getting the job done, he told himself again. He barely remembered the old Charlton Heston movie about the end of the world, but he wasn't capable of walking away from a monster that thought it could medicate the global population into complete submission and then dine on them at will. That wasn't happening while he was still breathing.

He dropped his gaze to the news, eyes moving over the page without registering a single item. He remembered how he'd felt under the influence of their grey goop. Happy. The weight and the stress had just vanished without a trace.

No, he corrected himself tightly. Not _happy_ , just not giving a shit about anything. Not the leviathans or his life or the things he'd wanted. Except somewhere in that out-of-this-life time, he seemed to have said something he couldn't remember to his brother that was prompting this latest round of 'get out while you can' crap.

* * *

Ellie blinked in the sunshine that poured through the windows and onto the bed, stretching out slowly as she realised she was alone. Rolling over, she picked up her watch from the nightstand and looked at it, mouth quirking up as she saw the time. Past ten. A couple more nights like that and she'd've caught up. She closed her eyes, letting memory seep back.

She hadn't been especially surprised it'd hit him that way. He had a long, long road of losses and she didn't think he'd really dealt with any of them, despite the fact he'd been letting go of some of his guilt, most of that misplaced to begin with.

It wasn't enough, she thought, pushing aside the covers and getting up, going to the bathroom to brush her teeth. So much of what he'd been through, what had happened, what he'd done and the way he saw himself through the distortions of those events was tangled up with emotions he refused to acknowledge. Every single thing in his life, back to the deaths of his friends and his father's sacrifice, was intertwined and the longer he tried to ignore all those things, the worse it all got.

And he was angry. Angry at Bobby's death. Angry at being manipulated and pushed and pulled again. Angry and frustrated at the lack of progress and justifiable action he could take. She had a feeling he needed that anger, right now. It was going to make it a lot harder for him to find his way through the rest.

She thought of what he'd told her in Missouri, cheeks warming a little at the memory. He'd seemed clear, but Bobby'd still been alive then. They hadn't known about Roman and despite her perpetual criss-crossing the country, they'd spent more time together in the last month than they'd managed in the previous four.

It didn't matter, she decided, rinsing her mouth and wiping her face. She was here and she'd stay until he figured out how he felt about it, do whatever she could to make it easier for him.

Even, she considered, looking around the room critically, if that included cleaning up. Living mostly in motels and hotels, where housekeeping wasn't an issue, she nevertheless drew the line at being able to feel the crud under her bare feet, she realised, looking down at the hardwood floor. It was speckled with crumbs of mud and grass from their boots, and layered in dust.

Pulling out a clean tee shirt and jeans, she dressed quickly, brushing her hair and leaving it loose. She could smell fresh coffee, rising up the stairs and her stomach was rumbling.

* * *

"Hey."

Sam's gaze snapped up hearing the unfamiliar softness in his brother's voice. He looked past Dean to see Ellie walking down the stairs.

He'd heard his brother sound a bit like that once or twice, he thought, looking back at him and seeing Dean's expression match the strangely gentle tone, but not quite the same.

"Hey," Ellie replied as she hit the last step. She looked ridiculously young, Sam thought, barefoot in old, worn denim and a thin white tee shirt, half tucked into the jeans, her hair a loose fall over her shoulders and down her back. Her voice, he noticed, held the same softness, filled with checked emotion.

He'd known there was something between them, even back when they'd first met her. It'd taken a long time for it to develop. He'd never seen Dean as closed-off as his brother'd been when she'd disappeared, swinging between anger and hopelessness like an out-of-control compass. He'd never seen Dean as relaxed as he'd been when she'd returned, back at Bobby's. Whatever it was between them, it ran deeper than he'd imagined. Dean hadn't said anything about the year he'd spent with Lisa, other than being pissed that he and Bobby had kept his resurrection a secret, but Bobby'd told him later that Ellie had turned up a few weeks after Dean had left. Turned up, gone to Indiana, then turned around and gone away again. Rubbing his fingers over his brow, he knew he never should've made Dean promise to go find the Braedens and make a life with them. He'd thought … he'd thought it would help his brother. He couldn't have been more wrong about that.

"You get enough sleep?" Dean asked Ellie, getting to his feet as she came up to the table, and going to the coffee pot.

"Not quite," she admitted, stopping at the table. "I'll catch up a bit more later on."

"Dean said you came straight through, from Albany," Sam said, twisting around in his chair to see his brother walking back with a cup for her.

"Uh, well, yeah," she said, shrugging with one shoulder as she took the cup and sat down. Her gaze skimmed over the papers spread over the table's surface as she sipped the hot black liquid. "Anything in those?"

"Not so far," Sam said.

"No," Dean answered at the same time. "Can't find a damned thing."

"What about that?" she asked, waving a hand at the adhoc pinboard that took up the back wall of the room.

Still cradling the cup, she stood and walked around the sofa to look at it. Sam watched Dean get up and follow her.

"That," his brother said, his tone just short of caustic. "Is a steaming pile of nothing."

Sam winced a little at the raw tone. Everything they'd found – everything Dean'd had found – about Dick Roman, Roman Enterprises, the biblical and pre-biblical lore they'd been able to scrape up on the leviathan, pictures of the levis they'd both seen, usually in the backgrounds of Roman's press conferences – was there, laid out and providing no clues about the monsters that they could actually use. Ensconced within a business empire, Roman was virtually untouchable and the rest of the levis were buried deep in his enterprises or in government agencies, invisible and untraceable. In the centre of the wall, the numbers Bobby had written before dying stood out, scratched deep into the paper in his brother's frustrated hand.

45489.

Dean'd started working on it the day after he'd called Ellie. Sam wasn't sure if it was a healthy outlet for his brother's feelings or not. Since they hadn't been able to match the numbers to anything, both their frustration levels had been climbing without relief.

Ellie leaned close to the wall, looking at the photographs, nodding a little as she seemed to recognise a couple. "This one is dead," she said, turning to look at Dean. "And that one. They're in pieces and buried in concrete and steel."

Dean pulled a red pen from his shirt pocket and uncapped it with his teeth, putting a cross through both faces. "Good."

"Those are the numbers?" Ellie stared at them. "How'd Bobby get them?"

"He found something in Roman's office," Sam said, getting up and walking over to them. "He didn't have time to tell us anything about it, just wrote down those numbers before he – uh, died."

"And you've got Frank working on this?" she asked.

"Yeah," Dean confirmed. "Gave them to him over a week ago."

"A few days ago," Sam corrected quietly.

"Has he come up with anything?" Ellie asked, looking at him.

"No." Dean snapped the word out, turning away.

"Not yet," Sam said. "I'm running searches as well, but –" He looked back at the laptop on the table. "– it's slow on that."

"Did Frank wipe your details from the federal and state databases?" Ellie asked, turning away from the wall and looking from Sam to Dean.

"No." They answered in unison, glancing at each other self-consciously. They'd asked, Sam thought, his gaze cutting away from his brother. Frank had been dismissive of the idea.

"He said it'd attract too much attention," Sam told her. Dean scowled at the floor and walked back to the table.

"What?" Ellie watched him go, and turned to Sam. "Dammit, I knew I should've–"

She cut herself off and turned for the stairs, leaving Sam standing on his own.

"Where's she going?" Sam asked his brother. Sitting at the table, Dean shrugged, staring sightlessly at the front page of the Seattle Times.

* * *

Upstairs, Ellie ran into the bedroom and grabbed her pack, pulling her laptop from it and putting it on the bed.

Should've known she needed to say something to Ray when she'd been down there, she thought, logging into the forum and scanning the list of names. She'd meant to get hold of him and get that business taken care of. She'd gotten sidetracked by other stuff.

He was online. _He's_ always _online_ , she reminded herself acerbically, unsure of who she was angry with as she typed in the query. There'd been a lot going on in the last few months but she couldn't consider that a valid excuse for forgetting how important it was to get the Winchesters back to anonymity.

Ray's response came back seconds later and she let out a harshly relieved exhale. A window opened on the screen and she started typing, calling up the details from memory.

News stations, international news agencies, law enforcement databases, from local to national, and checking in with Interpol as well. Newspapers. Re-feeds. Blogs. Her face screwed up a little as she thought of how much coverage there'd been.

 _Should've. Could've. Didn't._

Ray's confirmation came back in moments and she typed in another question. He confirmed that as well.

Down in the depths of Florida, hiding in between the wealthy retired and the young who flocked to the region every school break, Ellie envisaged the small, skinny man sitting in his ordinary-looking, average-sized bungalow, unnoticed by any of his neighbours, or anyone else. On the outside, the little house deflected attention like a deft magician. On the inside, however, it was a different story. Gutted, entirely open-plan and filled, wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor, with state of the art technology, and enough processing power to run a small country. State of the art because Ray wasn't just a programmer or just a designer. He wasn't _just_ anything, she thought with a small smile. He was one of those rare individuals who possessed both the imagination and the technical skills to improve – or build from scratch – anything he needed.

She closed the laptop and stood up. He would come up with a couple of pictures that looked very like but weren't the Winchesters and change the details everywhere he could reach. He'd change the histories and the aliases and the locations and it would be updated and replicated across as many databases as he could access without being noticed.

Which, she thought, rolling her shoulders and stretching, was pretty much everywhere.

* * *

Dean closed the computer as Ellie came down the stairs. He'd set up a dozen news feeds on Roman in the last five days, and the compulsion to check them all the time was fucking near overwhelming.

"What was that?" he asked, gesturing at the stairs.

"Something I should've done months ago," she said, crossing the room and dropping into a chair at the table. "I asked Ray to do something about your records."

"Not that it's not appreciated–" He gave her a sceptical look. "–but what the hell can he do?"

"Well," Ellie said, leaning on her elbows as she looked at him. "For starters, he can change the photographs everyone has of you and Sam, change the details, identifying marks, case histories." She shrugged. "The idea being to convince the interested parties that the perpetrators of the crimes you two were supposed to have committed looked a bit like you but weren't actually you, and in fact, the name Winchester was a little known alias that the press got hold of prematurely and the real spree killers were a couple of men with a different background, not even brothers. Most of the live footage the media got hold of and the stuff that went viral is poor quality. The two of you aren't perfectly identifiable from that anyway, so it'll be a matter of a close match."

"He can do that?" He felt a flicker of hope rising in between his doubts. It would mean getting a lot of his life – their life – back.

"Yeah, with enough time, there isn't much he can't do so long as it's all binary."

"Huh."

She smiled, glancing around the cabin. "Where's Sam?"

"He went into Kalispell. Said it's too slow up here to check out some things," he said, rubbing a hand over his face and looking around restlessly. "You, uh, wanna get out of here? Go for a walk or something?"

"Sure." She got up, going to the stairs. "Lemme get some boots on."

Getting to his feet, Dean walked to the door, not sure what was behind the impulse that was driving him out of the house. He heard Ellie come back down the stairs behind him, and stepped out onto the porch, leaving the door open.

To the left, a narrow walking track led up and around the mountain. He'd gone up there a few times. There was a stand of trees, downed or dead; they cut their winter firewood from about halfway along it. Beyond that the trail got steeper and led to a granite outcropping, a lot higher up.

The door closed and he heard the clunk of Ellie's boots on the boards, turning and waiting until she was beside him, then starting for the trailhead. They walked up the trail in silence, Dean slowing after a few minutes when he realised he was leaving Ellie behind, his strides long and hard, impelled by his thoughts.

 _Everyone leaves you, Dean. You noticed?_

He tried to push that away, tried to force it back down where it belonged. It hadn't been Mary Winchester, just the manipulations of the god squad in their attempts to get him to consent to being a walking, talking condom for an archangel. He'd tried to tell himself that's all it was. Tried to tell himself he'd never thought the same thing. He could lie to anyone, but not to the people he loved. And not to himself.

"There's a bit in the bible that says God took a sword and slayed the leviathan," he said, slowing down again as he tried to get his head back to where he wanted it. They'd been scavenging information from everywhere they could think of. It was just one of a thousand unrelated pieces.

"You're reading the bible now?" Ellie asked, catching up as they reached the steeper section of trail.

He glanced over his shoulder at her, his nose wrinkling up. "That's pretty much all we got."

Her smile was fast, gone again before he could enjoy it, and she said, "Guess so. It's, um, Isaiah, I think. ' _In that day, the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent._ '"

"Right, so what happened to that?"

She snorted softly behind him. "Dean, don't forget who wrote the bible – men. Just men. Most of them trying to interpret translations from other men who'd been translating and interpreting before them. Half the references to the levis in the Old Testament are actually references to Lucifer – also known as the great serpent, or a dragon."

"I thought you had faith."

"In God? Sure. In men? Uh, not so much," she said. "Look, basically it was an attempt to put a lot of information that some of the smarter folks thought was important into a framework they could keep teaching to the masses. History was thrown in, the really big events, but no one wrote about them at the time they happened, so of course a lot of exaggeration was going to slip in." She thought for a moment, then added, "I think it's in one of psalms, God crushed the heads of the leviathan and gave them as food to the creatures of the wilderness – what does that tell you?"

"Uh …"

She stopped and he turned around. "No one could find any evidence of these massive sea monsters, so they came up with an explanation. They didn't know about Purgatory, or how the monsters were locked up. They figured it's what a mighty warrior might do. That's it."

"Great."

On some level, he was aware that nothing she was saying was new to him. He'd known it, in the same way he knew that his father's journal could only hold John Winchester's experiences, not the last word on every detail of the things he'd run across. He wondered distractedly if Ellie's journal was more objective.

"The pre-biblical stuff is more accurate," Ellie said, taking a couple steps closer on the track. "I gotta call from Patrick a few days ago and he said the Vatican is going to be more helpful in handing out the information they have."

"The Vatican?"

"Don't kid yourself," she told him, her tone holding a slight edge. "They've got a hell of a lot of knowledge tucked away in their vaults. They just don't like to share."

"Huh."

He turned away, walking slowly up toward the granite block. "How'd you get contacts like that anyway?"

"Right place at the right time," she said. "Or wrong place at the right time, sometimes."

 _What do I do if I lose everybody?_ He'd asked her a while ago. _Start again_ , she'd told him. _And again, if need be_. He didn't think he could keep doing that.

"What's going on?" Ellie asked as they reached the top, walking past him to the edge of the enormous boulder and looking back over her shoulder at him.

Following her, he looked down the slope of the mountainside, over the forest. He could see one bend of the highway, much further down, far enough that the noise of the occasional traffic didn't reach them.

"What'm I doing wrong?" he asked, his head ducking against a sudden surge of guilt. This had been Rufus' place. He'd left it to Bobby. Bobby was gone and now it was theirs. It wasn't right.

"Nothing," Ellie said. "This is the life, Dean. It comes with risks. Bobby knew that, better than most."

"He wouldn't've been there if it wasn't for –"

"He would've been there–" she said, cutting him off with an impatient gesture. "–because he was a hunter and he had a good reason to be there. They knew about him from Cas. They blew up his house. He was in it up to his eyeballs. This isn't on you, Dean."

"It doesn't feel like that," he said, turning around and dropping to the flat stone surface, looking out across the mountain. "It feels like I'm the one who fucked up."

"Over-developed sense of responsibility," she said, her tone light as she sat down next to him, following the direction of his gaze. "Too much on you too young and no way of separating what was yours from anyone else's. Tearing yourself up about it isn't going to help you, or Bobby, or Sam."

"Maybe that's who just who I am?"

"I might've agreed with you, you know," Ellie said. "If it wasn't for the fact that when I met you, you weren't trying to carry the world on your shoulders."

"I wasn't?" He couldn't remember how he'd been back then. Seemed like a million years ago. He'd been a different person.

"No, you were limiting yourself to worrying about Sam, not saving the world."

She was right, he realised. There'd been more than enough to worry about his little brother in those days. Saving the world'd never entered his mind.

"Is there something I c-can take to get rid of it? Like a-a pill or something?" he asked, turning to look at her and forcing a one-sided smile to take the edge of bitterness from his voice.

She smiled, leaning against his shoulder. "Sure, I packed a bottle, just in case."

Looking back at the view, he felt the restlessness begin to settle, the tension that climbed every time he looked at that wall in the cabin, Roman's face sneering at him from every photograph, start to very slowly ease back. Maybe he was making it all too personal. Needing the anger. Needing something. He pulled in a deeper breath.

"You think we have a shot at these things?"

Beside him, he felt her exhale, shoulder rising and falling slightly against his.

"Yeah, we do," she said quietly. "But this isn't going to be a short haul. We've got to get our heads around the idea that it's going to be a marathon. They're too well-organised now and we've fallen behind. We can catch up, but running in blindly is not going to work."

He couldn't disagree. With the best of intentions, Cas'd screwed them up in more ways than one, given the levis the upper hand from the second they'd landed. He heard his father's voice in his mind, an old memory.

 _Yeah, so it's fucked to hell. What do we do? We pull back, regroup, rethink, check the intel. Then we go back in prepared._

He had the feeling his father would have liked Ellie.

She leaned her head against the top of his shoulder and asked, "How's Sam doing?"

"Better," he told her, glad to be able to say that straight out. "He's not jumpin' at shadows and he says he can still keep the hallucinations under control with pain. Says it just disappears."

"That's good," Ellie said, lifting her head. "But I meant, how's he doing with losing Bobby?"

"Oh," he said, looking away. "Uh, you know … I guess …"

"You haven't asked," Ellie said, making it not quite a question. "And you haven't told him anything either."

"He knows," Dean argued, half-heartedly.

"Of course he does," Ellie said, tilting her head a little to look up at him. "That's not the point."

He knew it wasn't. He didn't think he could let go of the pain without losing his anger as well. That was the point. She was right about it being a marathon and he wouldn't last the distance.

"Why didn't you tell me you were loaded?" he asked. Not the most subtle subject change, but she seemed willing to let it go.

"It didn't seem relevant," she told him, after a moment. "You didn't ask. I just assumed Sam'd told you."

"You looking for a new base now?"

"Not right now," Ellie said. "But yeah, soon."

"How long can you stick around?" He looked out over the mountainside as the question came out.

"Oh," Ellie said, following his gaze. "Till you get sick of me, or find a job."

Surprise caught him by the throat. "Uh, yeah, well, that might take some time."

He heard the smile in her voice as she answered, "That's okay with me."

"Uh, about last night …" he said, turning to look at her.

Her eyes were half-closed against the bright morning sunshine that lit up her hair, the long smooth column of her neck slightly curved as she lifted her face, studying the sky.

Sometimes he just wanted to be able to look at her, he thought, the unconscious grace of her, the unlikely perfection of her colouring … the expressions she rarely tried to hide.

"Uh … that was probably, you know, just a one-off. Stress, uh … you know."

"I never doubted it," Ellie said, straightening a little to lean on one arm and turning to meet his gaze with a frank gleam in her eyes.

A flickering rush of heat filled him. "We could, uh, check it out. Make sure, you know."

"I thought you'd never ask."

He laughed, pretending it wasn't relief he could feel and relishing the abrupt disappearance of the steel-edged emotion, the knots and the restlessness. Rocking back onto his heels and rising, he held one hand out to her.

"You just can't get enough of me," he said, absurdly pleased he could say something like that to her and _know_ she wouldn't misinterpret it or take it the wrong way … or even think he was some kind of self-centred jerk for saying it.

"You got that right," she agreed, taking his hand and letting him pull her to her feet.

The forthright response made him smile, at the same time as he internally shook his head at it. She didn't play games about feelings, didn't seem to want to try to make him jump through hoops to prove how he felt … he told her and that was all she needed, apparently. That hadn't been his experience with most of the women he'd known, long or short term.

* * *

There was no stemming his arousal this time. It pounded in his blood, suffusing nerve and muscle with aching pleasure, growing with every touch and taste, a rapacious vortex he wanted desperately to lose himself in. His body trembling under the onslaught, Dean wrestled against his enjoyment. Guilt, formless and piercing, stabbed through the waves of sensation. He was alive. Everyone else had died.

 _I don't want to die_ , he'd said to her, and she hadn't let him off at that. _That's not enough. Do you want to live?_

Living meant accepting the pain, she'd told him. It meant not hiding from it, not trying to bury it or drown it, not pretending it didn't exist. It meant knowing that the risks were always there and everything could be taken away at any time, and wanting to fight anyway.

He remembered arguing that he'd known that, that he'd done just that his whole life. It hadn't been until later that he'd realised that somewhere along the line he'd stopped doing it. He would weigh the risks and consequences for himself, and for those he tried to save, but he'd stopped accepting the fallout for those he cared about. He'd stopped doing it after Hell, he thought.

 _How I feel ... this ... inside me ... I wish I couldn't feel anything, Sammy. I wish I couldn't feel a damn thing._

He'd wished that for a long time. He'd tried to make it happen, tried to block out everything, through whatever avenues he could think of. It hadn't been until he'd watched her leave the parking lot, her words echoing through his thoughts, that he'd realised he couldn't keep pretending he wasn't feeling anything. Bad timing, he thought. It hadn't been long after that Sam'd picked Ruby and he'd been smashed by the aftermath.

Ellie's hips rocked up against his, and he shuddered with the feel of her, hot and swollen tight all around him, his thoughts barely coherent but his struggle going on and on.

Living meant understanding what he'd done. It meant going back and looking hard at everything that'd happened. He wanted to. Most of the time he put it off, pushed it back down or aside, tried to find diversions in other things. Jobs. Worry about his brother. A bottle.

 _Well, I guess I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be._

Admitting that, to the angel, to himself, had torn a piece out of him. There were … there had been … times he'd thought maybe he could find that piece again. Get it back. Times when he'd been close to understanding – to really getting – what'd happened to him. What he'd done. What he'd felt. Then something would happen and he'd miss that last grasp, bury it all again, try to pretend it didn't matter. What was done was done. Not all the wishing in the world could undo it.

Under him, Ellie arched up and he lost those amorphous background thoughts at the same time as he lost his breath; palpating spasms encircling him and dragging him down, coruscating waves of pleasure too intense for definition, barely manageable as feelings, fluxing and flooding through him; and the world, and everything in it, except the two of them, gone. Wiped out.

He wanted to live when she was here. Wanted to have this all the days of his life. It wasn't enough, and he knew it. Even without her, he had to find his reasons.

* * *

 _ **Two days later**_

Sam leaned back in his chair, pushing his cleaned plate aside and sighing with contentment. For the first time since they'd gotten back from Jersey, he felt like he might be able to relax, just a little, his stomach full of home-cooked food and the surroundings no longer covered in dust, cobwebs, unidentifiable muck with an underlying scent of long-damp socks.

Looking at his brother, still wiping the sauce from his plate with a hunk of bread, he thought Dean might be benefiting from the change as well. For a man who thought nothing of binding up a wound with a greasy car rag, or eating leftovers that'd been in the fridge for unknown lengths of time, his brother had an odd streak of finickiness when it came to general hygiene.

In the third chair, Ellie leaned over and picked up his plate, stacking on top of her own. "FBI, Homeland and Marshall Services have all issued an 'error in ID' notification to law enforcement nationwide," she told them, taking Dean's plate when he pushed it toward her and leaned back in his chair.

"Nothing to stop John Q from identifying you, of course, they couldn't publicise a retraction since all parties were believed dead." Getting up, she continued over her shoulder. "You, twice, now. But a little appearance modification and –"

"I'm not dying my fucking hair," Dean cut her off, snatching his beer and swallowing a mouthful belligerently.

Ellie stacked the dishes in the sink and turned around. "Wasn't going to suggest it," she said to him, her voice light. "Maybe using the fibbie IDs more for the time being, and shaving a bit more regularly. Maybe staying out of Manitoc, St Louis and Ankeny for the next twenty years."

Sam looked from Ellie to his brother, and shrugged. "Okay with me."

"Fine." Dean thunked the bottle on the table. "What about Roman? Your friend come up with anything more on him?"

"He's working on the security," Ellie said, sitting down. "Roman's got layers –"

Dean got to his feet abruptly, catching his chair before it flipped over and dragging it back to the table. "I'm going out."

"What?" Sam sputtered, shooting a fast glance at Ellie. "Wait a minute – where –?"

"Out," his brother said through his teeth as he hooked his jacket from beside the door and snatched up his keys from the counter. "I need to – I – I just need to go out, alright?"

The front door slammed and Sam looked across the table at Ellie. "What the hell –?"

She shook her head. "Leave him to it, Sam."

"You're alright with that?" he asked. He'd never seen his brother like that with people he cared about. No, he thought a second later, the house in Sioux Falls returning too vividly. He had. Once. Dean had turned on Bobby like a wounded dog once. Cas too. And him. When they'd dragged him back from trying to contact Michael. "Ellie, he –"

She was rubbing her temple lightly with one finger when she looked up at him. "He's angry, Sam. That's all. Angry there are no solid leads, nothing for him to do. His grief is pushing at him to deal with it, and he can't."

Digesting that, Sam shook his head and got up to pace restlessly. "Doesn't mean he can take it out on everyone else," he said.

When she didn't answer immediately, he stopped to look at her. She was smiling slightly.

"When you and Jessica were living together, and you had a fight," she asked. "How'd you get through it?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that they'd never fought, but he knew that wasn't true. The secrets he'd kept from her back then had caused a few disagreements, a couple of outright fights.

"One of us usually calmed down quicker," he said, remembering the ice-cream fight. "And talked the other one out of it."

Ellie nodded. "He can't be calm right now," she said, glancing at the front door. "There's been too much. Too fast. But I can. And one of us has to."

"Doesn't it hurt?" he asked her, the agitation gone as suddenly as it'd arisen. He walked back to the table, dropping into his chair. He didn't want to see Dean screw this up.

"It might, if I let it," she told him. "He's not doing any of this deliberately. He's in pain, and unrelieved pain can make even the mildest person savage. When he gets back, he'll've thought about some of it. He's got a very strong feel for fair play; I know you know that, Sam. He'll be calmer when he's had a chance to let go at least a part of what he's carrying."

She was right, Sam thought. Dean did have a wide streak of justice. He couldn't count the number of times the two of them had fought and Dean had apologised afterwards, sometimes not in so many words, but tacitly, offering his tokens of peace and whatever it was he'd figured out about himself or the situation. It was rare for his brother to deliberately aim to hurt. He'd been steeped in the idea of saving others from the moment their mother had died and that down-to-the-bone protectiveness wasn't something he could readily shed, even when he wanted to.

Sam watched Ellie get up from the table and turn away, going to the sink and twisting on the tap to run hot water. He was damned if he knew how his brother had managed to find a woman who understood him so well. She knew Dean better than he did, he thought, although to be fair she hadn't been saddled with a mountain of baggage from their dragged-around upbringing to contend with first. Dean didn't have to say anything about it; he could see the way his brother relaxed when she was around, how – until Bobby had died – his walls seemed to crumble and he smiled and laughed more often, and easier. He felt a peculiar shiver run up his spine as he looked at her. He didn't want to know what Dean would be like if he lost her again. Not that his brother would, he told himself, crossing his fingers, like a superstitious child, under the table.

"You were, uh, saying … about Roman's security?" he said, reaching to the armchair for the laptop. "How deep is deep?"

"Really deep," she told him, adding detergent to the hot water and exhaling. "It'll take Ray some time to get around it, I think. In the meantime, our best bet of getting ahead of them is going to be thinking like them."

"How do we manage that?"

"Well," she said, turning around and walking slowly across the room to the wall of printouts and photographs. "If you were planning on docilising the entire human race and taking over, what infrastructure would you be looking at?"

* * *

Dean sat in the black car, his fingers tightening and loosening around a bottle in a brown paper bag, his gaze fixed straight ahead and staring at the black nothingness of the shadows of the forest surrounding him.

Seven days and they were still nowhere, he thought savagely, hardly noticing the protesting rustle of the bag as his hand clenched on it. Seven days and Roman was running around free as a bird and Frank was doing god knew what and Ellie'd given them some background but not one solid lead.

He needed to do something. When his father had been taken, he'd rebuilt the car. When Ellie'd disappeared, he'd found case after case to work on. When Sam'd jumped in the hole, he'd tried to make himself fit into a normal life and drink the nightmares and his grief into submission. He couldn't sit around and just wait. He wasn't wired that way.

The cap of the bottle was unscrewed without his recognition of doing it, and the first swallow lit up his tongue and throat with a fiery roar, hitting his stomach and providing a fake warmth against the bleakness of his thoughts. No chance of getting drunk after the meal he'd had and he didn't want to blot anything out, just dull down the edges for a while, let him think without the surge and turmoil of his emotions getting in the way.

His brother was searching the news. Looking for jobs. Looking to keep them both too busy to think about the big picture. He felt a flash of impatience with the tactic. The big picture wouldn't go away if he didn't look at it. Killing more run-of-the-mill monsters didn't get them any closer to taking out the levis and getting back to square one.

There was a good chance that sooner or later, Sam'd come up with a job he couldn't ignore and they'd have to go. He was barely holding it together now. He didn't think it'd be an improvement when she wasn't around to give him an anchor for his rage and grief and guilt.

He tipped the bottle up, swallowing fast, eyes closing. He'd been acting like a dick more often than not in the last couple of days, even with her here. She understood, he told himself, with an edge of defensiveness. She'd always seemed to know what he was he thinking before he did. What he felt. What it meant. Where all the cracks and fissures were.

Lowering the bottle, the bag holding it crackling a little, he stared at the neck, discomfort beginning to seep through his anger. It wasn't something he should be taking for granted, that knowledge of who he was. Not something he should assume would always be there, no matter what he did.

Almost everything he'd tried to do had been fucked over. But not that. He felt around the seat and found the bottle's cap, screwing it on and tossing the bottle into the back seat. Leaning back, letting his head rest against the seat, the whiskey warming him, memories of that pink motel room in Missouri filled his mind. What he'd said and how it'd felt, to think those things. To say them out loud.

Like the first time, it'd felt right. Like he could say it honestly and mean it, 'cause somewhere, he'd known he'd never be saying that to anyone else. He hadn't wanted to make it come out lighter, or less than what it was. Those times he hadn't felt the squirm of embarrassment at opening up. Had just felt the need to be as honest as he could be. To be himself, he thought. Not needing walls and barricades. Not being afraid of showing her.

There was one other time he could remember being that agonisingly honest. That'd been with his brother, watching Sam's desire for revenge flare up into rage, knowing already in his heart that his father was trapped somewhere, maybe dead, and he had to get through to his brother, had to tell him that he wasn't going to be able what they had to do if Sam went his own way. That'd hurt like hell to get out but it stopped Sammy cold. Brought him back. For a little while, anyway.

He leaned forward, fingers closing around the ignition key and turning it, the engine rumbling into life with its familiar, comforting song.

He had to find a line between the rage that wanted to eat him from the inside out and the grief that made him want to stop fighting for good. Had to find a line where he didn't let it spill out over everyone else and risk what he had. Had to find a way to deal.

The car rolled forward, engine idling and he shifted into gear, following the road back up the mountain.

* * *

Ellie opened her eyes as she heard the thud of boots on the floor beside the bed.

"Hey."

Dean jumped a little, swinging around, his jeans halfway to the floor. "Shit – sorry, I was trying not to wake you."

"You didn't," she said, moving over and pushing the covers down as he dropped his tee shirt on the floor.

She caught the cold scent of moisture, under that the sharper smell of whiskey as he slid in next to her, felt the dampness of his hair.

"It's raining?"

"Just started," he said, burrowing deeper under the quilt but not getting too close to her.

She could feel the tension radiating from him. She had the strong impression he was almost certain that she understood. But not all the way, not quite. He was waiting, she thought, her breath escaping in a soft exhale. Waiting for her to tell him he was screwing things up. Waiting for a recrimination.

Sliding closer, she felt his tiny flinch as her arm slid over his chest and curled around him, felt a faint shudder ripple through him when she settled her cheek against his shoulder, his breath huffing out as if he'd been holding it. His arm curved around behind her.

"Sorry," he breathed, softer than a whisper. "It's … there's nothing I can do …"

"I know," Ellie whispered back, tilting her head up a little. "It's okay."

For a moment longer she could feel the tension, still there in the hardness of the muscle under her cheek. Then he let it go, taking a deeper breath, his chest rising high and falling low beneath her arm, his body starting to relax and she closed her eyes as his arm tightened around her.


	3. Chapter 3 Bargaining

**Chapter 3 Bargaining**

* * *

 _ **Next morning**_

Dean flipped another pancake onto the stack teetering on the warming plate beside him, turning around as he saw Sam come in through the front door, his brother's arms overloaded with newspapers.

"Hey," he said, pouring more batter into the heavy pan and turning back to the stove, hiding the twitch of his mouth at the wary expression he caught in Sam's eyes.

"Morning," Sam said, closing the door and walking over to the table. "You seem … uh … happy."

"Yeah, why not?" Dean agreed with a bland expression.

"Because you've been walking around looking like you wanted to kill something for the past week?" Sam suggested.

"Uh, well …" Dean slid the spatula under the pancake and shook the pan. "Woke up on the right side today."

"Do I get my head bitten off if I ask?"

Grinning, Dean flipped the pancake and cocked a brow at him. "Don't think you really want the intimate details, man."

It took Sam a second longer to process the remark and he turned away rapidly, getting the laptop out of the satchel and setting it on the table. "You're right. I don't."

"Beautiful, natural act," Dean murmured, adding the latest hotcake to the heap with a smile.

"Not with breakfast," Sam retorted.

"Especially with breakfast," Dean corrected. "Speaking of which, how many can you eat?"

"Three," Sam told him, his nose wrinkling up as he got up to get a coffee. "Ellie still sleeping?"

"Like the righteous," Dean said, adding an egg and a couple of slices of bacon to the plates and carrying them past Sam to the table.

"New York Times?" he asked, reading the mastheads upside down as he pushed them aside to make room for the plates. "Where'd you go to get that?"

"Kalispell Airport," Sam told him, sitting down with his cup. "They've got the main papers from the around the country in vending machines."

"Whaddaya know," Dean muttered disinterestedly. He poured maple syrup liberally over his plate.

"Ellie and I went over Roman's business transactions," Sam said, his fork paused midway to his mouth. "Turns out, he's been buying up big, all across the board."

"Like what?" Dean asked, barely lifting his gaze to meet Sam's.

"Ag business, processing plants, plus HMOs, research centres," Sam said, hurriedly chewing and swallowing. "Some deals with Asian countries for distribution –"

"Medical?"

"Pinged my radar too," Sam admitted. "No definite direction yet, but Ray said he's been making moves on a couple of boutique genetic research centres in Europe, feeling out the prospects through a bunch of subsidiaries and dummy corps."

"Lemme guess," Dean said, tucking his mouthful into one cheek. "There's nothin' we can do about any of this?"

"Not right now." Picking up his cup, Sam shrugged. "We're tracking, which is good. But for the moment, we need to keep –"

"Busy," Dean finished for him, gusting out a resigned exhale as he looked away. "Yeah. I know."

* * *

An hour later, both were buried in the newspapers, reading from cover to cover and looking for anything that might be classified as weirdness … of their variety. Dean closed the LA Times and dropped it on the floor, rolling his neck as he picked up the Portland News.

"You know, what you said about, uh, calling people …?" he said to his brother. "About, uh, Bobby's passing …?"

Sam looked up. "Mmm-hmm?"

"I was thinking, maybe we should be doing –"

"No need," Sam said, shaking his head. "Ellie went through Bobby's address book last night, spoke to everyone she could verify, and called a few others she knows to spread the word."

"Huh."

Sam looked at him quizzically. "Let's us off the hook," he said. "You didn't want to."

"Yeah. No."

He didn't want to talk to anyone about Bobby's death. Didn't want to have to say it out loud more than was necessary. He wanted to forget about it, if he possibly could. It wasn't dealing but he couldn't, not right now.

Turning the pages, he stared at the newsprint without really seeing it. When John Winchester had died, Bobby and Sam had gone through the stuff in the truck, boxing it up and calling those who'd known his father to let them know. He'd been fighting against the certainty of what his father had done. For him. Trying to make two and two equal five. He hadn't wanted to deal with the aftermath of his father's death and had never gone looking for the things Bobby'd saved.

Another way of pretending, he wondered? He'd never been back to Blue Earth either, not even to look at the old house or wonder about Jim's grave. Or Caleb's. Rufus was buried, his bones encircled in salt and iron. Pamela had been buried somewhere east, near her folks. Ellen and Jo were still in Carthage, their ashes mixed with the building's. Bobby'd sorted through their stuff, he thought, knuckling his brow wearily.

Was it any wonder he couldn't figure out how to let these people go?

 _At the end of the day, you two are family. Life's short, and ours are shorter than most. We're gonna spend it wringing our hands? Something's gonna get us eventually, and when my guts get ripped out, just so you two know, we're good. Blanket apology for all the crap that anybody's done all the way around._

They'd been standing next to Rufus' grave and he'd wanted to get out of there. Wanted to get away. He hadn't really thought about what he was going to say to Bobby and Sam until it was out of his mouth, hanging in the air between them.

It'd been bullshit, he thought, letting the paper sag back onto the table. The sort of bullshit he'd used most of his life to get past moments that were too full of things he didn't want to face or too awkward or too … something. At the same time, it wasn't. Not really. He hadn't wanted Sam or Bobby to feel like there'd been something left unsaid or left undone if it was his grave they were standing over.

It had also been a way to get away from the endless recriminations of the past, he considered. He'd been tired of not being able to understand what his brother had done. Been tired of going over and over the year he'd spent trying to be normal and the fact that neither Bobby nor Sam had realised what the cost had been. Been tired, pretty much period.

He missed them all. And, he thought, at some point, he would have to deal with them being gone for good and find a way to let them go. Was all the stuff still around? Somewhere? In a storage place or safe-house–?

"Hey," Sam said, breaking through those thoughts with a rattle of the paper.

"What?"

"Got something." Sam folded the paper and passed it across the table.

Taking it, Dean skimmed over the headlines, brows drawing together abruptly as he saw what his brother had found.

 _ **Two Found Dead in 'Haunted' Mountain Retreat.**_

 _Police have been close-mouthed about the murders in an upcountry house just outside the city last Wednesday, stating that they are still gathering evidence. The murders shocked the local community who'd only just welcomed newly-wed couple, Janine and Michael Tremmayne, to the quiet neighbourhood._

 _The house, known locally as being haunted for two decades, has not been without its tragedies, however, as our investigations proved. In 1995, two academic professors were murdered in a horrific manner. No one was ever questioned or apprehended in that case, nor in the cases that followed. In 2000, another killing took place …_

His gaze flicked up to the paper's masthead. Spokane.

… _residents claim the ghosts of the first couple killed there can be seen from time to time and for some time the house appeared on the list of America's Most Haunted Homes …_

"Five attacks altogether," Sam commented, his gaze on the laptop's screen as he bypassed security and opened the Spokane police department's records. "All of them follow the same pattern."

"Hauntings don't usually start so quick after deaths."

"No," Sam agreed. "Unless it's an echo of a violent death."

"Echoes don't kill," Dean said flatly, brow knitting together as he re-read the article. Something was bugging him about the story. They'd worked three or four jobs in Spokane, over the years, but none of them had been hauntings or restless ghosts. And they'd never come across any suggestion of a haunted house within the county's boundaries.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, the sense of having missed something churning at him. Turning to look at Sam, he asked, "What else you got there?"

"Uh, killings in 2000, 2003, then nothing 'til '07." Sam scanned through the reports. "The cops have no idea. They didn't release much to the press, the bodies were found torn to pieces –"

"You found a job?"

Dean swung around to see Ellie walking down the stairs toward them. She looked better, he thought distractedly, the shadows under her eyes almost gone.

"Uh, maybe, yeah," he allowed, getting to his feet. "You hungry?"

"Not this minute," she told him, walking over to the table. "I can wait. What is it?"

"Haunting," Sam said, gesturing at the paper. "We think."

The back of Dean's neck began to prickle as he watched her pick up the paper, and the memory he'd been chasing crashed back at the same time as he saw her face smooth out and turn pale.

Spokane. It'd been '95. He'd been sixteen and she'd been ten and they'd gotten there just short of too late. How the _hell_ could he've forgotten that fucking hunt, it wasn't a goddamned haunting, it was the –

"There've been five –" Sam was continuing, his attention back on the laptop's screen.

"Sam! Not now," Dean said, taking a step closer to her. "Ellie –"

She looked up at him, her face cool and her eyes dark. "I'll be ready to go in five," she said, tossing the paper back on the table. He reached out as she started to turn away.

"No. Not this one," he told her, hand curling around her wrist and holding her.

For a long second, they stood still, Ellie's gaze on his hand. He couldn't see her breathing but he could see her pulse, beating wildly against the thin skin at the side of her neck, could feel the tension that was radiating from her and getting stronger.

She was too close to it. The reports of the ghosts could be an echo of that night. He didn't want her to see what'd happened to her mother and father. He remembered the bodies. Torn to pieces was a mild euphemism for what the witch's thought form had done to them.

"Don't ask me to sit this out, Dean," Ellie said finally, her voice very quiet. "I can't do that."

"I'm not asking, Ellie."

"Let go."

"Don't–just–just stop and listen to me, for one second. Alright?" he asked. "Please."

She didn't move and he heard the harsh rasp of Sam's inhale on the other side of the table.

"This isn't going to do you any good," he started, looking down at her. "Your–your parents–Ellie, the way they died–if there's an echo there, you don't want to see it–"

"I didn't see anything," she cut him off suddenly, turning into his grip and staring up at him. He saw a sharp glitter in her eyes. "I don't have a single coherent memory any of it, Dean. I don't know what happened! Just what you told me!"

"You think it's going to be better maybe reliving it?" he countered, feeling the throb of her pain tightening his throat. "It won't."

"You don't know that and you don't know what not knowing– _never_ knowing–feels like to me!" She sucked in a gasping breath and shook her head. "I can't keep imagining it. It's worse that way."

"No one needs to see–"

"Dean, I don't _need_ your protection from my past," Ellie said, her voice gaining power and riding over the top of his. "I need your _help_! To face it. To stop it."

Under his fingers, she was shaking and he ducked his head, knowing he was going to cave, against his instincts, against all good, goddamned sense, against the way he felt.

He let go of her wrist and nodded. "Alright," he said, meeting her eyes. "One condition. You tell me the second anything starts backfiring on you."

"Yeah, you got it," Ellie said, turning away and heading for the stairs.

"Dean, this isn't such a great idea –" Sam ventured.

"You think?" Dean watched her go up the stairs then turned back to the table. "She's right. I can't stop her from going. Maybe I can help keep it from being too bad."

"You know what you're after?"

Nodding, Dean looked around the room. "It was an artificial elemental," he said, walking across to the sofa when he saw the gear bag. "You remember? We chased it down to Montana."

Sam looked at him, brow wrinkling up. "You killed that witch. Why would the fetch still be around?"

"I don't know," Dean said, lifting the bag onto the table and opening it. "Maybe there was something we missed, overlooked."

He checked through the contents methodically. Salt. Butane. Filings of cold iron. The shotguns, pump and double barrel. Long machete. Silver knives. An ornately fashioned letter opener, made of brass. There were several small linen bags and a couple of silk ones. The linen bags held dried herbs, crushed bone and semi-precious stones, powdered bark and roots. The silk ones were hex bags, the last of the ones Missouri had shown them how to make, filled with crossroad dirt, angelica, Van Van oil, vervain and the powdered bones of cat and falcon. For the elemental, salt would be the most powerful deterrent, he thought.

 _They'd found the witch and she'd created another thought form, sending against his father._ He'd shot her, point blank practically, as she'd been throwing a spell at him. He rubbed his hands unconsciously against the sides of his jeans, the sense memories of them melting still recallable.

"I can't believe Dad would've missed something like that," Sam said.

"We never went back," Dean said, zipping up the bag. "I think Dad meant to … but we never did."

He couldn't remember why his father had wanted to return to the place. He remembered taking the car, going back to the hospital, a week later. But the little girl had gone by then. East, the nurse at the hospital had said. To relatives.

"When was the second attack?"

"2000." Sam told him. "The house took a while to get through probate. A family bought it and moved in May 19th. A neighbour found the bodies on May 21st."

Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Dean tried to remember when the elemental had killed Ellie's parents. It'd been warming up, he thought, brow furrowing more deeply as he grabbed at the memories of the place. Snow'd gone. He remembered getting to the cabin, seeing the destruction. He remembered the witch's house, a stark stone and concrete fortress built into a ravine.

It'd been a long time ago.

"It's only attacking when there's someone in the house. Same dates and times," Sam said, correlating the deaths with the movement of the house on the real estate market. "But killing the witch should've stopped the power flow before anything else happened."

Shrugging, Dean wondered if they'd missed something in the house. He couldn't imagine his father letting something like that go, if there'd been the slightest chance of it returning. Then again, he thought uncomfortably, he hadn't been able to imagine his father leaving the girl there alone either. Until John had done it.

"Ellie and me'll go to the house. We can cleanse it – or burn it to the ground, if nothing else works," he said, his head turning a little toward the stairs as he heard footsteps on the treads. "We'll take her truck."

"Dad have much in the journal about artificial elementals?"

Dean shook his head. "Not much," he told Sam. "That was the only one I remember having to face."

"I'll see if I can find out more from here then," Sam said. "Keep your cell on."

"Yeah."

* * *

"I'll drive," Ellie said as they walked down the porch steps and headed for her truck.

Dean reached out, gripping her shoulder to bring her to a halt and shaking his head.

"No, I'll drive," he said, letting go and holding out his hand for the keys. "You gotta fill me in on the place and what you do remember. It was a long time ago."

For a moment, he thought she was going to argue with him, then she dropped the keys into his palm and turned for the passenger side. The tension he'd felt earlier in her hadn't dissipated at all, he thought, walking to the driver's door and getting in. It hummed behind the shortness of her gestures, the slightly deeper pitch of her voice, in the way her gaze cut away from his.

"You alright?" he asked as she slid in the other side.

"Not right now," Ellie said, her face screwing up a little. "I'm gonna drop out on you for a little while. I need to do something about the shock."

He shrugged, starting the engine. "Got about five hours on the road," he told her as the truck started down the driveway. "Knock yourself out."

Turning onto the highway from the end of the rutted, gravel road, he glanced at her. Her eyes were almost closed, her breathing slow enough to be almost imperceptible and he realised that the tension that'd been coming off in waves had gone.

The truck growled as he picked up speed. Someday, he thought, he'd have to ask her how she did that.

* * *

 _ **I-90 W, Idaho. Three hours later.**_

Ellie blinked, drawing in a long, deep breath. The tension was still there. A mix of fear and determination, she thought distantly. It wouldn't slow her down and it wouldn't affect her reactions. It was wrapped up in a cyclic mantra she'd learned a long time ago, a self-perpetuating loop of not-quite-thought and not-quite-feeling that would keep it away from her conscious thoughts.

She stretched, glancing around. "Idaho?"

His gaze on the road, Dean nodded. "We'll cross into Washington in about forty minutes." He slid a sideways look at her. "You alright?"

"Better," she told him. She'd never gone back, thinking there was nothing to go back for, nothing to see. For years, the week that'd encompassed her parents' death had been a black hole.

She'd woken in a hospital, a strange woman sitting ramrod stiff in the chair nearby. Her aunt had introduced herself, and had told her, without fuss or much sensitivity, that her parents had been killed. At the time, she'd absorbed that with the same matter-of-fact pragmatism with which the information had been delivered. It hadn't been until a month or two later that the nightmares had begun, and it'd been more than six months later when she'd come to the conclusion that Aunt Viv was no more keen for her to regain her memories than she was, allowing her to stop the endless and useless treatments the very expensive Boston psychiatrist had been putting her through.

" _It's your life, Eleanor," Aunt Viv'd said, on a frigidly cold wintry afternoon, sleet pounding the glass of the tall windows of the old-fashioned Victorian parlour, a small and completely inadequate fire burning on the grate. "You can mope around and wish for things to be different – or you can make up your mind what you want to do with it and get on with it."_

It probably wasn't the most comforting thing to tell an eleven year orphan, Ellie remembered with a slight smile. Vivian Alicia Michelson had not been a warm person. Ruthlessly intelligent, utterly moral and frighteningly capable, her aunt had struggled sometimes to show what she'd felt, but behind the cool and rigidly proper exterior, she'd seen the old woman's deeply compassionate nature and through the years she'd lived in the tall Victorian house, she'd felt more secure with Aunt Viv's undemonstrative caring than she could remember feeling with her mother and father. The recognition plucked at her, bring a moment's pain and she pushed the memories aside, frowning down at her hands.

In any case, somehow, it'd been what she'd needed to hear. Maybe even wanted to hear. And she had. Got on with it. From that point on, she'd been a hundred percent focussed on what could possibly have happened and how to prevent it ever happening again.

The memories hadn't returned.

Until she'd been sitting in Ellen's ramshackle bar one evening and a man had walked over to her and thrown her a line. She remembered looking up at him, wondering if he was going to take a rejection well, when he'd stopped talking suddenly and his gaze had sharpened on her. Staring into her eyes as if he'd seen … something, she thought. A second later, the memory had hit her – those eyes – and a weight of emotion that'd made no earthly sense falling onto her with a weight like an avalanche.

 _Fear. Pain. Horror. A smothering sensation and a gentle touch and a thousand knives ripping into her and darkness._ She had no idea what she'd said to him, getting up, grabbing her bag and leaving before he could say anything else. The feelings that'd surrounded the memory of his eyes hadn't left her alone for two days, and she'd been no wiser when they'd finally begun to dissipate, swelling and receding no matter what she was doing or where she was. She remembered his eyes, and that was all.

"Can you, uh, run me through what you remember?" Dean asked, his gaze back on the highway.

Ellie looked through the windshield, the small crease between her brows. "We moved to Spokane at the end of winter," she said. "My, uh, parents got a grant, they said. To work at the university on a project that was important to them."

The big old house in Missoula and their housekeeper, Mrs Hatcher, were let go. Her memories of the place were cloudy, lacking in detail. Her mother had been singing when they'd unpacked boxes and bags in the cabin on the mountainside overlooking their new town. It would be a different life, she remembered her saying.

"I started at St Michael's," she said softly, rubbing her fingertips over her temple, the memory of standing in the forecourt of the school with her parents coming back, the new school uniform too big for her, itchy and uncomfortable. The nun had looked strange, blue robes and wimple covering her from head to foot. Her family hadn't been religious.

And no one had mentioned anything about boarding school when they'd left Missoula.

"You went to a Catholic school?" Dean asked, flicking a glance at her.

"Catholic boarding school," Ellie confirmed. "For less than a year."

"Boarding school?"

"Uh, yeah," Ellie told him. "It was in Spokane. I came home for holidays."

One holiday, at least, she thought. Easter. She pushed the memories aside impatiently.

"I wasn't supposed to be there," she continued, turning to look out the window at the passing forests. "I had to get a letter, permission for an excursion, and my father was supposed to drive me back to school that evening. Then I woke up in a hospital on the other side of the country."

The silence stretched out between them, Dean finally clearing his throat.

"What was your aunt like?"

Ellie smiled. "She was my father's older sister," she said, changing her position and leaning back into the corner between the door and the seat.

"She wasn't expecting to become a parent at fifty-five. Her husband had died a few years before and she was a busy woman," she continued, her voice dropping a little. "Charities, committees, politics–behind the scenes–she was involved in everything. She was … formidable. Very intelligent and not in the slightest bit sentimental."

"But you liked her?"

It wasn't a question, and Ellie nodded. "Yeah, I loved her. She didn't lie about anything. Ever. What you saw was what you got, and that was a relief, you know?"

He nodded, and she thought of Bobby, of Rufus and Ellen. They'd been similar. In some ways, if not others. Straightforward people who didn't rate others' opinions all that highly, until it'd been earned.

"She believed in education and that was the only thing she really insisted on," she said. "She wasn't, you know, a very loving person, at least not on the outside, but I felt loved."

She had, she thought, with a touch of … not surprise, but recognition, perhaps. Vivian would have battled tigers to keep her safe and that'd seeped through their relationship, strengthening very slowly over the years, so gradually she'd never really realised how deep it'd gone.

Ahead, a sign advised that they'd reach Spokane in another seventy-nine miles, and she let out her breath, keeping a firm grip on the flutter of nerves that was trying to break through her barriers.

"We turn off before the city," she said.

* * *

Dean flexed his fingers against the wheel. He remembered the cabin's location, the winding forest road that'd seemed dark and deserted. In '95, there'd been only a couple of houses on the mountain's spur.

He wasn't sure what to make of the revelations of Ellie's past, or the slightly out-of-it tone of her voice. He shot another sideways glance at her, brows drawing together as he noted the lack of expression in her face.

Her aunt sounded alright, he thought, turning back to the road and overtaking a slower vehicle. He couldn't think of a reason her parents would've sent her to a boarding school in the same city they were living in.

He'd spent the three hours of driving wracking his memories for any of the details of that witch hunt in '95. A lot'd come back with pushing and prodding. Two families had been killed before his father had gotten enough information on the case. The third, Ellie's, had moved to Spokane weeks after her father's decision to turn down the research grant the witch'd been after. He remembered the photograph of her father, in his dad's file. A mild-looking guy, no one that looked like he'd be murdered out of spite.

The fetch'd done the other two families in the early hours of the morning, in their houses, while they'd been sleeping. His father had thought they'd have plenty of time, but when they'd gotten to the cabin, it'd already been too late.

And, he'd remembered, he and Sam had searched the witch's weird house from top to bottom and had found nothing of the witch's paraphernalia; not books, not the circles his father had told them to look for, no altars, or ingredient stores, not so much as a fucking herbal tea bag.

"What do you know about elementals?" he asked Ellie.

"They require a psychic or a witch with a lot of power," she said, turning to look at him. "Something of the victim, to provide a key. Um … they can be repelled by salt and vinegar, iron and gold, but that's somewhat dependent on the strength of the maker and the type of elemental formed."

He nodded. "Vinegar?"

"It repels psychic emanations, for some reason," Ellie said distractedly. "In medieval use, the witch used thought forms to see things that were happening in a distant town, or in someone's house –"

"Different type," Dean told her, remembering the section in his father's journal. "Fetches needed more power – a witch couldn't let one just feed off him or her, like a watcher. It needed something stronger."

"Like a circle? Or a sacrifice?"

"Something," he agreed. "We searched that woman's place. Everywhere. There was nothing like that there."

"Maybe she used a different location?" Ellie asked.

"Maybe, but the track, from where we found you, along the straight line we could see and get readings from – that went to her house."

 _They'd gotten to the cabin about an hour after sunset. The front windows had been blown out, the porch covered in glass and the splintered remains of the door._

"What'd the cops tell you?"

"Not much," she said. "I was ten. My aunt, Vivian, she was pretty protective. They said a madman had broken in."

He cocked a brow at the road. "Madman?"

"Yeah, well, that's all I think Vivian would let them say."

"You didn't go back."

"No," Ellie said, letting her breath out. "By the time I was old enough to have tried, I couldn't think of a reason to."

"But you started hunting," he said, that still a conundrum to him. He heard her draw in a breath.

"There was an old bookstore, not far from the school I went to," Ellie said, and he heard her voice drop again, the words coming out more slowly. "Later on, I wondered if there was a reason – you know, a non-coincidental reason – I would've picked that one, of all the book stores in Boston … but … it was just the only old one I knew of, so maybe it was just a coincidence."

"The owner was Polish," she continued after a moment's silence. "He was a pretty grumpy old guy, didn't think I should be messing around in his store, to start off with. He changed his mind after a while, when he realised I was looking for specific things."

"Things like what?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know what she'd been looking for.

"I didn't know," she said, turning and smiling at him. "Crazy, huh? I started with horror, but apart from a couple of novels that seemed to touch a nerve, I couldn't find anything really. Then I went through the books on the occult he had. There weren't many. Hauntings, ghosts, poltergeists, some Christian works on the idea of possession, although they were careful not to say that definitively. Josef asked me what I was looking for one day, and I told him as much as I knew then of what'd happened."

"That wasn't much," he commented doubtfully.

"No, it wasn't," she agreed. "But it rang a bell with him. He brought out three books; two of them were general occult texts, the third was a number of accounts of people who'd believed they'd been targeted by witchcraft."

He saw her shrug in his peripheral vision. "Sounds vague."

"It was, kind of," she said. "But they somehow felt … I don't know … familiar, in some way I couldn't understand. It felt like I'd read them before – or knew they existed – I don't know. I read them a hundred times, and he gave me a few more, not too many at a time."

"Educating you?"

"I don't think so," Ellie said, shaking her head. "Testing me, maybe. Trying to figure out if it was a fad or an obsession."

Dean frowned, turning to look at her. "And?"

"I was thirteen, and one day, when I went down there, there were two other people at the store," Ellie told him, her voice deepening again.

Her lids were heavy, her head tipped back. Dean felt a shiver skate down the back of his neck, looking at her.

"He introduced them as Mr and Mrs Macdonald and told me they had a bookstore that had a bigger selection of those kinds of books than he did."

 _The Hidden Door_ , he thought. He'd met the couple in October of 2010, looking for a way to get Sam out of the Cage. Sebastian and Katherine.

"They gave you more information?"

"Oh, yeah, they did," Ellie said. "They opened up a whole new world."

 _At thirteen_ , he thought, keeping his grimace internal. "Why didn't you want to live a normal life, Ellie?"

"I don't know," she said, changing her position against the seat again. "I really don't. I couldn't make myself be interested in what the others at my school were interested in. It felt like I was wasting time, if I spent a day shopping or looking at clothes, or going to see a new movie, or whatever. Felt like I didn't have that much time to waste."

A premonition, he wondered uneasily? Or just the pretty normal rush of growing up?

"So, you were this freaky, nerdy kid always buried in a weird book at school?" he asked, hoping to lighten the conversation, maybe get a smile from her.

She laughed, and gave him the smile he wanted to see. "Oh, yeah, that was me," she told him, the shadows in her eyes gone. "You would've run a mile."

He smiled back, his mental image of her making him wonder about that. "Probably would've," he said. "Richmond's a way from Boston."

"Yeah," Ellie said, the smile vanishing. "Katherine kind of took pity on me, I think. She sent me things. And later on, she introduced me to Yure and Kasha, and I learned a lot more from them."

Staring at the highway, Dean's brows drew together. He'd heard her talk of them, in passing, but he hadn't met them. "The forger?"

Ellie nodded. "Among other things," she said, straightening up in the seat. "I think it's about two turns up, on the left," she added as her attention sharpened on the road signs in front of them.

"Yeah," Dean said. "This is starting to look familiar."

* * *

 _ **Redbird Road**_

"There, off the Bridge Road," Ellie said, pointing at the turnoff.

"Looks different," Dean commented.

She silently agreed, shading her eyes as they turned south onto the narrow road. There were more houses, tucked here and there in the forest, and the trees had been thinned out, not the dense woods of her memories.

"There weren't any houses here," she said, as Dean drove south and west. "Just woods."

He nodded. "Progress, huh?"

"It was right at the end," Ellie told him, her eyes narrowing as the tree line thinned further, fields visible between them. "What was the end of the road."

The road turned abruptly due west and he slowed down, easing the truck over the potholes and washouts. Another bend took them slightly west of north and he slowed further as it seemed that was the end of the road. In a wide clearing, a house stood, much bigger than Ellie remembered, another smaller building to one side.

Yellow crime tape fluttered along the porch and barred the entrance and Ellie slid out of the truck when he stopped.

"They extended it," she muttered, her voice so low he barely heard her.

"Ellie, wait a sec –"

Walking toward the unfamiliar place, Ellie slowed as the shape of the original cabin seem to float under the house in front of her. There were additional rooms, both on the ground and first floors, to either side, she thought.

A ripple of dizziness hit her and she ducked her head, eyes closing against the vertigo, swallowing hard as a wave of nausea turned her stomach over.

 _Breathe_ , she told herself. _It's only the shock of being here, seeing it so differently. That's all it was. Just breathe through it and let it go_.

"Ellie?" Dean's voice held a sharp concern, coming from behind her, and she forced herself to open her eyes, to straighten up and look around.

"Yeah," she said, telling herself it was okay. "Just, uh … I'm okay."

"You don't look okay," Dean said, walking toward her. "You were gonna let me know if something happened."

"Nothing did," she said, gesturing vaguely toward the house. "I – I got a flash, of what it used to look like, under that."

His expression was sceptical. "If we don't find anything here, we're burning it down, right?"

"Right."

"And if anything else happens, you're sitting this out in the truck, right?" he pressed.

Ellie nodded. "Right."

"I got your word on that?"

She smiled at him. "Cross my heart," she said lightly, tilting her head to look at the sky. "We've got about an hour before sunset, let's do this, okay?"

"Okay."

* * *

 _ **Whitefish, Montana**_

Sam pushed aside the book in front of him, closed the multiple open windows on the laptop's screen and dropped his head into his hands. The internet was too full of the bullshit and wishful practitioners of wish-it-were-true magic and the books they had here at the cabin were too generalised to be of use. He lifted his head, running both hands to push his hair back and got to his feet, eyeing the almost-empty coffee pot on the kitchen counter. Enough for one more cup anyway, he thought.

The artificial elemental was not, as so often supposed, a manifestation of one of the four elements known in witchcraft as the Quarters or the Guardians, although any thought form could embody the essence of one of those elements. His father's journal had most of that right.

Leaning hipshot against the timber counter as he poured the coffee, he wondered if his father'd had more information, maybe stashed in one of the anonymous storage units around the country. Some of them, he and Dean knew about. He had the feeling there were a number still out there they didn't.

Everything was energy and the thought form was no different. What powered it, usually, was the energy of the witch or psychic who'd created it. That could be enhanced or even separated entirely from the maker by the use of spell circles, but it still had to be able to draw on a living power source or it would gradually degenerate, dissipate back into the ambient energies from which it'd come. Thought forms did that if they were not absorbed back into the body of the maker. It was a kind of a failsafe for those who dabbled without knowing what they were doing.

The fetch the witch had used to target the families had manifested as Air, capable of tremendous force and utilising anything caught in the whirlwind of its range. The one she'd brought to life in her home, to set against his father, had been using her rage, he thought, creating a fire-form. The fire elemental had vanished as soon as his brother had killed the witch. Something else was still powering the other one.

So, he told himself mockingly, it was made deliberately, for an entirely different purpose. It had been. Sent out to kill people. The only way it could've done that, he realised belatedly, was if the witch had had something of theirs that was tangible. Real. A photograph, or even something in their handwriting, wouldn't've cut it. That precision of targeting needed … blood. Hair. Fingernails … a unique identifier to guide the fetch … and to trigger the frenzy of the attack.

It hadn't killed Ellie when it'd been sent the first time, he thought, rubbing a knuckle over his brow. Because her parents had been the targets and both been there? Because after it'd killed them, it couldn't differentiate between her and the detritus of her parent's bodies?

Unwelcomed, the memory of the cabin's main room filled his mind's eye again. Blood had been sprayed over every wall, every surface. Dean hadn't let him see what remained of the bodies, but whatever the fetch had done to them had been left far and wide. Had Ellie's unique signature been hidden by that clutter? If it had, it wouldn't be the case now.

He swore suddenly as realisation dropped into him, whole and complete. They were so used to thinking of those personal identifiers in terms of magic, or rather, not in terms of what a unique key really meant. Genetically. Right down to the DNA strand. Tossing the coffee into the sink, he strode back to the table, snatching up his phone and hitting the speed dial.

The number rang and he heard his brother's voice, advising him to leave a message.

"Dean! Pick up, man!" he muttered. The voicemail beeped in his ear. "Dean, this thing is keying off Ellie's mother and father – their DNA. It's gonna find Ellie the same way. You need to get out of there, right now!"

The voicemail beeped again, and he cut the call, frowning as he stared down at the notes that covered the table. The witch was dead but the fetch was still returning to the house, looking for the final target. Or drawn back there with the remains that couldn't have been removed from every surface, every crack.

He flipped open one of the books he'd read through, hunting for the page that twitched in his memory.

 _If the thought form can absorb enough energy, it will continue to cycle through its original instructions indefinitely_ , he read, brow furrowing up.

It was absorbing the energy of every kill, he realised, slamming the book shut. Fading away a bit in the years when no one had been in the house, revitalised when it could take life. It didn't explain why it hadn't dissipated over the years but somehow, they had missed the witch's power source when they'd searched the house. And it was still operational.

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

Dean carried the last two jerricans of gas to the porch and dumped them beside the door. He stretched his back as the lock clicked and Ellie pushed the police department's makeshift plywood door open.

They walked inside cautiously, each turning in a different direction. Looking around, Dean let out a soft exhale. Nothing he could see matched up with his memory of this place. Then, the room had been a large single space, kitchen to the right, taking up the corner between the stairs and the front door; the rest a living area, not large but giving the impression of plenty of space, no ceiling, just the open rafters of the gabled roof, high above.

Now, the original living area had been boxed in; the two glass doors, lying shattered on the floor, having provided access. The kitchen had been half-closed off with a breakfast bar and dining nook, the furniture smashed and the whitegoods ripped apart.

He turned to see Ellie looking up the staircase, her face milk-white and her expression fixed.

"Hey – what?"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. "I – it's nothing."

 _Sure_ , he thought. _Nothing_. He took a step toward her, and she turned around, going back out to the porch to pick up a can of fuel.

"It's a lot bigger now," she said as she came back in, her free hand gesturing to the stairs. "Do we focus on the ground floor or spread some up there?"

The fire would burn up, he thought. Even with the lining, the framing was wooden, and pretty dry. "We'll soak down here," he told her, walking past to the door to grab a couple more cans. "There's no basement, right?"

"Right," Ellie said. She unscrewed the cap and started to splash the fuel over the debris in the kitchen.

* * *

Hearing him walk down the hall, Ellie emptied the last of the gas over the crushed table and recapped the can.

It was all different. She'd thought memory might come back, seeing it again, but nothing really looked familiar and aside from a moment by the staircase, when the changes to the house had seemed to dissolve to transparency, showing her the old stairs, nothing had returned.

Carrying the empty jerrican out, she put it down near the porch steps and turned around, picking up another full one. Even the front entrance was different, she thought, glancing at the where the kitchen nook had been extended out, taking up a part of what had been a long run of porch.

She walked back inside, the weight of the can dragging at her. No matter what had been changed, no one could ever have removed every trace of biological matter from the place. The fetch had to have been drawn to the place, over the years, by that key, mindlessly following the orders it'd been imbued with.

In the centre of the living room, she stopped, unscrewing the cap and setting it on the floor. She glanced back at the staircase, feeling that faint pull to it again.

When they'd moved in, the stairs had been open, leading up to a gallery that'd wrapped around the cathedral ceiling of the living area. Now it was half-closed in, the walls of the living room rising to meet what had been a balustrade.

She took a couple steps closer to the stairs, putting the can down and lifting her hand to the thick newel post at the foot. There was only a single run to the gallery and she used to stand at the rail at the top, looking down …

… _sunset had washed the room in gold and blushing reds, lighting her mother's hair to fire, gilding her skin as she'd looked up._

" _Feeling better, sweetheart?" she'd called out, and for a moment, Ellie had thought her mother had been talking to her. Then she'd heard the footfall behind her._

" _Yeah, headache's gone," her father had said, walking past her to the stairs and starting down. "Ellie, the note's all signed, it's in my office. Run and get your things and I'll meet you at the car."_

 _He'd been halfway down when the front door had exploded inwards, sending splinters of wood and glass across the width of the big room. The noise had shocked her into stillness, standing there, staring down, unable to do anything as a living force of wind had rushed into the cabin. Her father had bolted down the stairs, running to intercept it, god knows what he'd thought he could do. It'd veered across the room toward her mother._

" _Jason!"_

 _The scream was drowned in a howling cacophony and she'd barely heard her father's anguished shout as he'd run headlong to her …_

Vertigo shook her as the past overtook the present and the old layout was superimposed over the new one. She was at the top of the stairs, and she turned her head, watching the memory of her father, running into storm that was somehow inside their home.

 _Just a memory_ , she told herself, her head pounding, knees and her side sore for some reason. She staggered to one side, hand flung out for anything to anchor herself with. _Accept it, let it wash through you, don't hang onto it_. The thoughts throbbed in her head and she screwed her eyes tight, fingers curling around the newel post and digging in.

The sensations – sight and smell and sound and taste – disappeared. Opening her eyes cautiously, she felt a trickle of moisture running down her temple, and lifted her hand, wiping at it. Sweat. She wiped her face with the back of her arm.

Turning, she leaned back against the post, sucking in mouthfuls of air, running her fingers through her hair and pushing it off her face as her heartbeat slowed and steadied. The memory had been as vivid as a dream, she thought uneasily, the feelings nightmarish in their intensity and the inevitability of it.

Lifting her head, she straightened up, frowning as a stab of pain shot through both knees. Her gaze was snagged by movement and through the kitchen windows, she saw the tops of the trees across the clearing waving and tossing, the inexplicable aches and pains forgotten as realisation of what that meant hit abruptly.

Oh, hell, she thought, glancing at her watch. It was too early, the hands pointing to the five and the six. Golden light spilled over the wooden floors, tinting her skin.

"Dean! I think it's coming!"

* * *

Dean upended the jerrican, the last of the gasoline splashing over the water heater and the washing machine. He almost dropped the can when he heard Ellie's yell, swinging around, the can banging into the cupboard on his way out of the laundry and back into the hall.

He could hear the wind now, moaning slightly against the sides of the house, and through the windows at the front, he saw the tops of the trees swaying, a fast glance at his watch showing it was too early, another half-hour 'til dark.

"What –"

The words died in his throat as Ellie turned toward him, struggling with the last can of gas. Her face was chalky, blood was trickling from a small cut just above her left brow and the eye below it had an eight-ball haemorrhage, blood covering the cornea from the rim of her iris to the outside corner.

"Ellie, what happened?"

"What?" She looked at him uncomprehendingly, her gaze dropping to the can in her hands. "I – I didn't do the dining room."

He frowned, leaning forward and grabbing the can from her. "Forget it, we gotta get out of here."

They swung around together, a shriek of wind drowning everything else out as the sunshine from outside was blocked, dirt and leaves blanketing the windows for a moment before swirling away.

"I don't think we have time," Ellie said, watching the thin plywood door slam shut.

"Goddamn it, thing's too early," he muttered, grabbing her wrist and dragging her with to the kitchen.

"Not that much," Ellie said, stopping beside him. "It was sunset … the light was red."

He twisted around at her tone, eyes narrowing as he took in her slightly absent expression. "You remembered?"

"I was at the top of the stairs," Ellie continued, a crease appearing between her brows. "My mother was down here–" She gestured to the living area. "My father'd had a migraine but he felt better …"

"Ellie? You with me?" Dean asked, not liking the way her eyes were losing focus. He started as the house rattled, and flicked a worried look at the door. "C'mon, I need you here, right now!"

"Her hair looked like fire," Ellie said, staring past him. "And it burst through the door."

There was a low creaking sound, and Dean's gaze was dragged back to the front door. He could feel the vibration through the soles of his feet, in the fillings at the back of his mouth, the house oscillating with the force surrounding it.

 _Sonofabitch_.

"Ellie, we're not gonna have much time," he said, studying her face. She wasn't listening, he realised, was back somewhere in the past.

Looking around the room, he thought they might escape notice for a few seconds, if they were lucky. Time enough to haul ass out the front door and throw a match in.

 _I need some goddamned luck_ , he thought, pulling the only half-aware woman beside him down into a crouch. _Need something to get us out of here. C'mon, just one fucking break?_

The door exploded inward, taking the glass from every front window with it, and the noise suddenly climbed to a deafening scream as a twisting wind filled the entrance.

There was a flickering in the centre of the living room, the air getting thicker and an image jumping and fritzing into coherence. A slender woman. The echo, Dean realised, watching it coalesce as the rest of the room's contents were picked up and whirled around it, crashing into the walls and dropping to the floor, flung upwards to the ceiling and detonating against the walls. Her hair was long, pulled up by the howling wind, copper-red and twisting above her.

She screamed something soundlessly, and a man's image appeared on the stairs, his face vaguely familiar, contorted with fear, his mouth open as he ran down the stairs and threw himself toward her.

"Go," Dean shouted at Ellie, dragging her to her feet and pushing her out in front of him, catching her as she stumbled over the remains of the nook's seating.

Shoving her through the remains of the doorway, Dean spun around, his hand diving into his pocket and pulling out his lighter, as he watched both echoes disintegrate in the force of the vortex. The Zippo lit, and he threw it into the kitchen, the flame catching a puddle of gas on the floor and billowing up to the ceiling, flooding the room with sudden heat and brilliant light.

Backing out the door, Dean watched the flames lick hungrily over the dry timber and fuel-soaked walls. He raised his arm as the fire took hold, shielding his face and casting a last look beneath it. The voracious elemental was rising, higher and higher, pulling the flames with it, and it disappeared into the stairwell. Dean turned away, stumbling down the porch steps and finding Ellie on her knees on the gravel.

"C'mon, it's going," he said, leaning over to catch her under the arms and draw her up. "We need to be in the next county before the fire crews get here."

* * *

The flames had engulfed the house, lighting the clearing and the driveway, lighting Ellie's face and making her bloodied eye look black. He felt her take in a deeper breath, her legs straightening and he slid one arm around her, taking some of her weight as he started walking for the pickup.

"What the hell happened?" he asked, opening the passenger door and looking at the cut on her brow.

She caught the direction of his gaze, lifting a hand and touching her fingers to the cut. "I don't know. I think I fell down the stairs."

"You went up them?"

"I –" She stopped, shaking her head slightly. "I thought I was pushed."

By _what_ , he wondered, closing the door and walking fast around the engine to the driver's door. The fetch hadn't gotten there until a few minutes later.

"Which way?" he asked as he slid into the driver's seat and turned the key. The engine rumbled to life.

"South," Ellie told him. "There's a – a road you can cut back to Bridge Road, about four miles down."

He nodded, twisting around in the seat and reversing back to the garage beside the house. As he straightened the truck up, he looked back at the house. It was an inferno, flames shooting into the sky, black and grey smoke cascading from the fallen-in sections of roof already.

"Dean, you were right," Ellie said as he spun the wheel and shifted into first. "I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't've come here."

He glanced at her, putting his foot down gently and shifting up. "How much came back?"

"A lot," she admitted, her face turned to the window.

"You alright?" he asked, damned sure she wasn't, but not knowing what else to say.

"Yeah. I –" she said. "I'm glad you were here."

"Me too," he told her, feeling that whole-heartedly. He didn't want to think about what could've happened if she'd tried to handle this one alone.


	4. Chapter 4 Depression

**Chapter 4 Depression**

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

They were travelling south, moving steadily at fifty five, when they were hit. Dean felt the back of the truck lift off the road, losing traction.

"What the fuck!?" He looked over his shoulder as the rear end hit the ground again, and the truck surged forward. There was nothing behind them, the black road empty.

Ellie had put her hands out, bracing them against the dash as she was flung forward, her head turning to look at Dean.

The next hit came from the side. The truck spun around and Dean swung the wheel into the direction of the spin, alternating stamping on the brake and accelerator to pull them out.

"Sonofabitch," he said, as he got them straightened out again and moving forward. "We've got company, but I don't know what."

Looking around at the empty road, the forest to either side of them, Ellie felt a spasm of certainty hit her, bringing a sharp throb to the side of her head.

The truck lurched sharply to one side, tilting upwards. She gripped the door handle to keep herself from falling onto Dean.

"Turn around, just go, as fast as you can," she told him. It was following her, she thought, jaw clenching as she realised the danger she'd brought on him. It was too late to do anything about it now.

He nodded, and swung the wheel around, pushing down on the accelerator. For a moment they were travelling on two wheels then the truck crashed down onto four again. He spun the wheel, and they swung around, going back up the 27 the way they'd come. Pushing his foot down, their speed increased to seventy, then eighty.

For a few moments it seemed that they might have gotten away. Then there was another hit from behind, shoving the truck forward. Dean held the wheel, eyes narrowed as he increased their speed and they flew up the road.

At the turn, he yanked the handbrake, locking the rear wheels and spinning the wheel again. The truck lurched around the tight corner, tyres keeping their contact on a prayer. He released the brake and hit the accelerator again and it found its balance and surged forward.

"Where the hell are we going?" he yelled at Ellie.

"I don't know." She was bracing herself between the door handle and the dashboard, trying to think.

"Do we go back the way we came?"

She shook her head, a memory of this road returning sharply. They'd gone on a picnic, down near the river, that Easter. Her father had gone back a different way.

"No, straight on. There's a connecting road, through the forest. It'll get us back to the highway."

* * *

The road started out as a blacktop two lane road but within a couple of miles, they were on gravel and it had narrowed. The forest was close to the sides and Dean could feel sweat running down his neck as he kept their speed high, the rear end shimmying over the corrugations and sliding out on every corner, every twist.

Climbing, the road twisting up over a narrow ridge, the next hit was harder, coming on a tight bend in the road. The truck spun around on the loose gravel, and Dean barely had time to straighten it out before they were rammed again, sending them off the road, and into the trees.

They came to an abrupt stop as they dropped off a sharp incline, the nose of the truck hitting a tree. Dean leaned back in his seat, raising a hand to the lump rapidly rising on his forehead. He looked at his fingers in the dim glow of the dash, but there was no blood.

Turning to Ellie, crumpled in the footwell beneath the dash, he could see blood flowing down the side of her face. He scrambled along the seat, and lifted her up, her head rolling back against his arm. The cut was superficial, bleeding freely, but shallow. The lump along it told him that she'd hit the edge of the dash.

He looked around, trying to see any movement in the trees that surrounded them, but it seemed to be still. Ominously so, he thought, considering the determination of the thing that'd been chasing them.

"Ellie, come on, wake up." He patted the side of her face. "We have to get out of here."

She jerked in his arms as consciousness returned abruptly, sitting up and blinking, one hand lifting to her head. "We crashed?"

"Yeah. We have to get out of here." He looked down at her. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I think so. Just a sore head." She frowned at the tree in front of them.

Dean tried his door but it was jammed somewhere. He reached over Ellie and the passenger door fell open. Grabbing her backpack, she slung it over her shoulder automatically as she slipped out. Behind her, Dean got out of the truck.

"Let's go."

* * *

They'd made about fifty yards across the slope of the hill, moonlight lighting enough to see the gaps between the trees, when they heard a creaking groan and turning back, saw the truck lifted into the air, and thrown further down the incline.

Dean frowned as the truck was picked up again, one door wrenched off and disappearing down the slope and the body tossed after it.

"What the–?" he said, turning back to her.

She shook her head, and grabbed his arm, tugging at him. "Not here. Come on."

Turning away from the systematic destruction of the vehicle, he followed her into the forest.

"That thing has a lot more power than it should have," he said, ducking under a fallen tree and catching up to her.

"I know." She looked behind them, then back to the narrow deer trail they were on.

She came to the edge of a drop-off suddenly, an arm thrown out to warn Dean. In the darkness it was impossible to see how deep it was, or how steep. Dropping to the ground, she slithered over the edge, feet first. Dean looked down, watching her disappear into the shadows and he muttered a soft curse, dropping and sliding off the edge.

They slid down through the loose pine needles, through the packed dirt and over rock and branches, ignoring the cuts and scrapes and impacts and trying to avoid the larger trees. The slope was very steep. Ellie hit the tree with her feet, and Dean slammed into her back.

"God, sorry," he grunted, rolling to his feet and taking her hand to pull her up.

"Look," she said, pointing up the slope. At the top the trees were lashing. "It's following me."

He couldn't argue with her. The elemental had been keyed to something of her parents, strong enough to draw it to them across distance, to keep coming even after they were dead.

"You need to go," she decided, turning back to him.

"What? No."

"Dean, it's tracking _me_ now," Ellie said, dragging in a breath. "Taking out the house, whatever remained there, the echoes – they were controlling it, keeping it to a fixed pattern. That pattern's gone and it's being powered by something – something we're not going to have time to find, not like this."

"Sam'll –"

"There's no time," she cut him off, looking along the slope. "You can get clear, it'll follow me. I'll find somewhere to hide –"

"Fuck that," he snorted in disbelief, eyes narrowing as his gaze took in the exposed hillside. "No."

"Listen to me! These hills have caves, a lotta limestone strata in between the igneous rock –"

"Then we'll find something that'll hold both of us!" he snapped impatiently.

"Staying here is only going to get us both killed."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he retorted, throwing a sideways glance upslope. Was that movement, at the top? "We don't have time to table this for discussion, Ellie."

At the foot of the slope, he could see slabs of rock, jutting out of the hill's side. "There, go!" he ordered, giving her a push toward them.

Moving across the slope, Ellie headed for the deep shadow in the cleft of the largest of the slabs. Behind her, Dean glanced back to the top of the slope, brows knitting as he saw the branches moving, about halfway down the side of the hill. She was right. It was tracking her and there wasn't a goddamned thing he could think of to do about it.

The sound of the wind picked up behind them as he hurried after her to the rock face, seeing the beam of a flashlight flickering over the base. He came to a stop, watching Ellie crouch down, the beam swallowed up by what looked like a ridiculously small hole, no more than a fold between two of the huge rocks. She dropped to her stomach, peering into it.

"It's deep enough," she said to him, her voice muffled. "I think it's wide enough for you."

He looked at it with less certainty, then felt the tickle of a frigidly cold wind, against the back of his neck, dropping to his knees next to her. "Get in, I'll follow."

Moving with a speed that startled him, she wriggled into the opening and disappeared and he knelt by the rock face, peering in after her. It was wider at ground height than it'd looked from above, but she was half his size, he thought, stretching out on his stomach. Somewhere behind them, up the hill and not far away, he heard the wind talking in the pines and he shoved his doubts aside, easing himself in after her, feeling the edges of the rock scraping against his shoulders and chest.

Goddamn, it was tight, he thought, blinking as light filled the narrow tunnel. He lifted his head a little, seeing a larger hole at the other end and crawled another couple of feet, the rough surface catching and holding him every now and then, the weight of the earth over him pressing down.

For a brief and heart-stopping moment, he thought he was stuck, sweating running down into his eyes as he tried to move forward. The rock was pushing onto his back, and he was abruptly aware of his heart, racing against his ribs.

 _Fuck it, calm down_ , he told himself forcibly, shifting his position a little to the right. He cleared the obstruction, and took a deeper breath, the tunnel widening a little as he moved cautiously forward on his forearms and toes, then opening out into a small cave.

Ellie was kneeling next to the entrance, her flashlight casting a dim spill of light against the back of the wall of the cave. She was digging through her backpack as he came through and sat up, apparently unaware or unconcerned about the near-claustrophobic attack he'd almost had.

"Get out of the way." She held a canister of salt in one hand, and a bundle of shining wire in the other, slipping back into the tunnel entrance as he ducked his head to avoid braining himself on the low rock ceiling and rolled to one side.

Salt he got, he thought, looking around the small cave and crawling to the back wall. A lot of the pure earth elements were inimical to the creatures created from the power of the soul, the ghosts and echoes and thought-forms. The wire, he wasn't so sure of. He sat down, leaning back against the mostly-flat rock and pulled out his cell, squinting at the screen. Two bars, maybe two and a half. It changed with every incremental move of his arm.

Looking up as Ellie crawled backwards out of the tunnel, he asked, "What'd you do?"

She rocked back onto her knees and wiped her eyes, leaving a smudge of dirt over her brow. "Talismans. Protection. Salt and gold and iron, mostly. It'll stop the elemental from entering here. For awhile anyway."

Duckwalking over to him, she reached for the flashlight. "It'll buy us a little time."

As if on cue, there was a roaring at the entrance of the tunnel and she drew back against the wall, her gaze fixed to the small round entrance, his drawn there as well. But nothing came up the tunnel and the noise died down, barely a spurt of dust puffing into their hiding space.

"Guess it worked," Dean said, straightening slightly against the stone behind him.

He watched her reach for the pack, pulling it closer and feeling around inside of it. After a moment she found what she wanted, pulling out a shallow ceramic dish and bottle of thickly viscous oil. A thick piece of cotton wick was dropped into the bowl and Ellie filled it with the oil, stoppering the bottle and replacing in her pack, her movements deft and economical.

She could've been lighting a candle in her own place, for all he could see of any trace of anxiety in her about their situation. It was, he thought, restful. To be with someone so disinclined to panic. She lit the wick, the flame from the cardboard match highlighting her features as it caught.

Soaked with oil, the wick burned slowly, with a gentle, strongly gold flame. He lifted a brow at her as she turned off the flashlight.

"Save on the batteries," she said, catching his unspoken question and giving him a lop-sided smile. The oil's light had softened her face, hiding the faint crow's feet at the corners of her eyes, hiding the dirt that smudged her brow.

"Romantic."

He grinned at her, a little suggestively, and saw the corners of her mouth tuck in, hiding a smile as she moved the bowl to the other side of the cave.

"We're going to need some help. You got your phone? I think I left mine in the glove box." She turned back to him, folding her legs to sit cross-legged, her back against the rock.

Nodding, he thumbed the screen and looking again at the signal's fluctuations as he moved it around the small space.

"How much rock do you think is over us?"

"Not much, we're in the side of the hill, I think."

"Got a signal. Pretty weak, but better than nothing." He dialled Sam's number, relieved when he heard his brother's voice in his ear.

"Sam?" He pressed the phone harder against the side of his head. It really wasn't much of a signal. "No, I didn't – look, we're trapped in a cave … yeah. Pretty sure it's the elemental – uh huh, yeah, got loose when we stopped the loop … I don't know …"

Ellie gestured for the phone. He passed it to her, wondering if there was much Sam would be able to actually do.

"Sam? It's Ellie … do you remember where the psychic's house was? … Inside there'll be a circle …. Yes, still open … you have to cut it with a knife, or break it … I don't know … not real long."

She handed the phone back to Dean and he heard his brother, rummaging through papers on the other end of the line.

"Sam? … it was near a town called something Falls … I know! … yeah, as fast as you can."

He closed the phone as Sam hung up. "You think the spell circle feeding it is still open?"

"That's the only thing I can think of. Didn't you search the house when you killed the psychic?"

"Yeah," he said, frowning as he remembered that search, the thrum of his fear for his father driving through the big house, through every cupboard and room. "We looked everywhere. Didn't find squat. How long will that protection last?"

"I don't know. It depends on what the elemental was supposed to do. It's using up energy hunting me. It's limited by what it can draw through the circle that's still open, if one is. I think – I think maybe it was recharging from the energy of the kills, but that must've dissipated by now." She shook her head, her gaze flicking back to the cave's entrance. "Maybe a few hours?"

* * *

 _ **Whitefish, Montana**_

Sam grabbed the keys and closed the door behind him, running for the car. He couldn't remember the name of the town, and he slid into the driver's seat, leaning over and popping the glove box to get the maps.

It wasn't in Washington or Idaho, he remembered that much. They'd been driving for at least a couple of hours from the cabin, tracking the elemental east, maybe north east, picking up fluctuating EMF along its route for nearly that long. They'd given up near dawn, and their father had plotted the fluctuations along a straight line from the cabin, a line that'd led them to the house.

It was near a long lake, in the mountains. The memory of the lake's surface, sparkling in the morning sunshine when they'd cross one end returned. They'd pulled over in the main street and John had talked to the local real estate agent.

And, he thought suddenly, peering at the map, it had been somewhere off the I-90, they'd turned off and headed north. He looked along the interstate marked on the map, looking for a town with Falls in the name. He almost laughed when he saw it.

Thompson Falls. In Montana.

It was about two hours drive from Whitefish. He started the engine and headed down the twisting gravel road to the 93, his smile fading as he realised that Ellie and his brother might not have two hours.

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

"So much for an easy job," Dean said as he finished cleaning Ellie's two scalp wounds. Both had clotted, neither looked serious. From past experience, he knew both would be delivering a headache.

"I'm sorry," Ellie said, turning to look at him.

"For what?"

Her face screwed up. "You and Sam were right. I should've listened to you. If I hadn't come, the elemental probably would have dissipated, without a target to follow. Now, we're stuck here."

"Tell you what," he said, settling himself more comfortably against the wall, drawing her to him, putting his arms around her. "We can have a pissing contest about who's made the worst calls when we get out, okay?"

Leaning into him, Ellie snorted softly.

"Sam's pretty sure that the witch used something personal of your parents to key the elemental," he continued. "Hair or fingernails or skin or blood. He thinks it's picking you up because of the DNA you share with them."

"He's probably right," Ellie agreed, stifling a yawn. "I told you it would've been better if you'd gotten out."

Shaking his head, he said, "No."

He'd lost her before. Too many times. It was a heart-racing, chest-tightening fucking terrifying thing to need someone, and he was no more comfortable with admitting to that need now than he'd been six months ago. _We don't leave anyone behind_ , his father's voice said, out of some memory that was distant and fuzzy with the years in between.

But they had, more and more as the years had gone by. They'd left Ash behind, not knowing how close the demons had been and what they'd do. They'd left Ellen and Jo behind. And Pamela. Left Adam behind with an archangel roaring through a split between the planes and light filling the world.

He swallowed against the memories and his arm tightened involuntarily around the woman beside him.

"I remembered you finding me. You and Sam. And your dad."

Her voice was so quiet, he hardly heard her, the words slowly sinking in. He looked down at her, wishing like hell she hadn't come here, hadn't gotten any of those memories back.

His memories of finding her, of how he'd held her down, so that his father could clean the wounds, came back thick and close. Her high child's scream as the alcohol had sluiced over the open flesh. Leaving her, alone and unprotected for the police and ambulance to find her, while they had gone to continue the hunt. It had been the first time he'd really doubted one of his father's decisions.

"In the house?" he asked, knowing the answer already. "You said – you told me you'd say something if anything like that happened."

"I didn't really get what happened, at the time," she said, rubbing at the little crease between her brows with one fingertip. "It was like … sleepwalking, I guess."

Her voice lightened slightly and he craned his neck, trying to see her expression.

"And – what? It's just come back?"

"Not really," Ellie said, uncrossing her legs and drawing them up to her chest.

Folding in on herself, he thought uneasily, watching her wrap one arm around them.

"It's more like … like I knew it all the time, but it was, uh, behind a curtain," she told him. "In the cabin … when the sun came through the windows, at that angle, the curtain just – blew away."

She glanced up at him, nose wrinkling up in a slight grimace. "You see, there were a lot of things I guess I didn't really want to know."

He chewed on the corner of his lip, uncomfortably. He wasn't sure if he should be derailing the conversation now, before it got any weirder, or if he should let her get it out, this stuff that'd been hidden away for what sounded like far too long.

"Ellie, what are you talking about?"

"Everyone has a family," she said, ducking her head to rest her chin on the top of her knees. "That's the first big lie you hear, from everywhere, you know, from TV and books and other people. Everyone's got a family and home is the place, when you show up there, they have to take you in."

The quote was vaguely familiar to him, but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it before.

"I bought it, when I was little," she kept on talking, and he shifted a little, trying to get a better view of her expression. She was staring at the oil lamp, and even obliquely, he could see its tiny reflection, dancing against the enlarged blackness of her pupils.

"I don't know wha–"

"Sssh," she said, cutting him off gently. "I gotta tell you a story. So you get it. Okay?"

"Uh, yeah," he agreed unwillingly. "Sure."

She turned away, staring at the flame dancing slowly over the oil.

"Once upon a time … there was a man and a woman and they loved each other more than anything else on earth."

Dean's breath caught in his throat at the faintly sing-song tone of her voice. It didn't sound like her. At all.

"And, they wanted to be together for ever, just the two of them. They vowed to never let anything come between them or to let anything spoil the way they gave themselves to each other. Never to have a family. Because they only had enough love for each other."

He felt a prickle crawl up the back of his neck as an image of the people in the locket flashed through his mind.

"But … well, accidents happen, and they had a little girl." Ellie's voice sharpened slightly, the cadence disappearing. He wasn't sure it was an improvement.

"They took care of her. She was clothed and fed and looked after and given all sorts of things to keep her occupied. But she wasn't wanted, and after a while, she figured that out."

He heard her breath catch, her shoulders heave suddenly under his arm.

"Ellie?"

"I've got nothing to bitch about, Dean." She shook her head, the lamp-light catching the answering gleams of gold in her hair. "You know? I had it good."

He waited, trying to take in what she was saying, the beginnings of a thread of anger rising on her behalf.

"One Christmas, I woke up and ran downstairs. I remember the tree – it was so beautiful, all trimmed, enough baubles and tinsel to sink a ship. There were presents under it, literally filling up all the space beneath it." She paused, and he let himself see the image, the tree and the presents. His father had avoided Christmas, for years. It'd taken him a while to figure out why. Why John Winchester occasionally left them alone at Christmas time. Why he'd never explained.

 _It wasn't perfect until after she died_. He could remember saying that to Sammy in the fucked up version of Heaven they'd been thrown into. It'd hadn't been true, not even at the time. His father had gone away for a few days, two or three months before the end. He'd remembered, a long time after talking to Joshua, that his mother'd told him what those fights had been about, had remembered how her voice'd been tight and frightened.

" _He meets some guy, who tells him he knows about his father, and we're – what? Supposed to drop everything? Give up everything so that he can find out what's been over and gone for the last twenty years?"_

He hadn't understand then, had just been a little kid. He'd understood her emotions well enough. The anger had been covering up fear. And he'd tried to make her feel better.

 _You didn't even warn him, Mom_. When he'd realised that, most of his memories of his mother had changed, turned around and become mysteries, puzzles that he had no answers for. That comment from the past had come back to him, clear as the day she'd said it, complete with the image of her, angrily cutting his sandwiches in half and then remembering him sitting there.

What if the guy his father had met had known what was coming? What if Mary had known who he was and had been trying to stop him from talking to John? What … if?

It wasn't like he was gonna get the answers now, he thought, pushing memories and questions away. His father had avoided Christmas because they'd reminded him of Mary, he knew.

"I was eight, I think," Ellie said, her tone becoming more matter-of-fact. He still wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. It was marginally better than the dreamy tone she'd had before. "I was excited but there was something wrong as well. I couldn't hear any noises from the rest of the house. I …"

Another pause, this time he could see the crease deepen between her brows. "I went looking for them. From the attic to the basement, I looked right through the house. They weren't there. I don't know why I didn't see the note earlier, I must have passed by the thing a dozen times while I was looking for them. It said that they'd gone away for a couple of weeks; Mrs Hatcher would be coming to look after me. Merry Christmas."

She lifted her head and looked at him, her face smooth, her eyes dry, her mouth twisting into a kind of smile. "Don't – don't think it was all that terrible. Doesn't rate as child abuse. Not even close," she told him and he looked away.

"It was the first time that I realised that our family was different, though," Ellie continued. "That what I saw in other families, what I read about in books, what I saw on TV and in the movies … all that shit about families … that didn't happen universally."

He couldn't argue. From what he'd seen, there was no universality to families … no matter what the circumstances. He'd loved his, had wanted to keep Sam and his father close. Sam'd been the opposite, couldn't wait to get away. His father … he thought his father had been living for them, more than for himself. He'd thought that in Salvation. Thought his father had been sucked dry by then, sick of hunting after something that'd taken his wife, the hope and meaning from his life, the childhoods from his children and everything else. He had an idea that it'd been his father's tiredness that'd been the crack Yellow Eyes had needed to crawl into John Winchester – and it'd been the threat against them that'd given his father a last burst of strength to hold the demon and get himself free.

"We moved to Spokane and there was a Catholic boarding school in the city. I told you about that, right?"

He nodded.

"I found out I was going there the morning my parents drove me down, bags packed. Surprise. So, I didn't come home much. I shouldn't have even been there, that night."

She smiled. "You know what the really hinky thing about all this was?"

He cleared his throat. There were too many contenders for that title, he thought.

"If it'd come four hours later, or the next day, or the day before?" Ellie said, looking back at the cave's entrance. "I wouldn't have been there. And Aunt Viv probably would've left me at St Michael's instead of taking me home with her. And I wouldn't've started hunting."

She lifted her head, tipping it back against his shoulder, shaking a little with a huff of laughter. "I probably would've been an academic, studying history or languages, living with a dozen cats."

He wanted to say something, to shatter that image, to reassure her, but nothing was coming to mind. Cas'd said something about her life, some argument he'd had with Uriel about her, something about destiny and her absence in it.

"You didn't remember this before?" he asked instead.

"I must've known it," Ellie said, brow furrowing. "But I never thought about it. I mean, literally, never thought about it. Until I looked up at the staircase in that house and saw the way it used to be. "

Watching her, the doubts and uncertainties she'd so rarely shown him – or anyone, he realised, a little belatedly – he drew in a deeper breath, trying to loosen the tightness that seemed to have grown around his chest. He'd wondered, a lot lately, how it was that she seemed to know him, know things about him that he hadn't said, had thought he hadn't shown. It might've been that, in all the ways that'd counted, he'd been as alone as she had, in the midst of his family. But, he considered, his need for family hadn't gone away. It'd gotten stronger over the years, even after Cicero.

 _Don't you want to have a family, have kids?_ He'd asked her years ago. _Someday. Sure_ , she'd replied. _Maybe I'm not ready_.

"Is, uh – is this why you didn't want a family, Ellie?"

"No." She looked away. "Maybe. I don't know."

Shaking her head, she added, "It's not that. When I was younger, I made a – uh, I don't know – a deal, I think, with myself. Promised myself I wouldn't get close to anyone. I convinced myself I didn't want any of it." She smiled derisively at the memory, mouth curving down. "It took me a while to realise it doesn't really work that way."

He remembered her at the roadhouse, her cool self-possession, polite but utterly unmoved by him. She'd been twenty then.

"What changed your mind?" He didn't really want to the answer to that, didn't want to think about another guy, being with her, loving her, being loved by her.

She looked at him for a long moment, looking into his eyes, her expression a little puzzled, a little wry. "You did."

The two simple words took his breath away.

It wasn't like he hadn't heard the expression before. He'd written it off, one of those over-romanticised ideas that didn't really happen in real life. Some cliché that people used for romance novels and love songs and chick-flicks. It was kind of ironic it was happening to him. Right then. He couldn't breathe.

Looking at her, his eyes wide, he struggled to get his lungs moving again.

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

Sam glanced at the airport signs as he came into the outskirts of Thompson Falls. The mountains rose steeply to either side of the road, covered in forest, and the valley was still black with night.

He frowned as landmarks tugged at his memories. He'd been twelve when they'd driven through here; tired, but excited. His memories were filled with the feelings he'd had back then – about hunting, his father, his brother, the girl they'd left alone, the psychic who'd created that destructive force that had destroyed several families. The long-ago emotions weren't helping and he tried to shut them out, to concentrate on the memory alone.

Driving into the town, along the main street, he followed the river to his left and slowed down, looking for something that was familiar.

The town was bigger, shopfronts had been torn down, rebuilt, renovated. Across the river, was a bridge. That was familiar. Passing the library, he turned left, the tyres changing note as they hit the concrete.

A second bridge carried him over a narrow estuary, a rapidly silting false channel, a steady beat from the black car's wheels as they strummed the seams.

Blinking as the road doglegged ahead, dropping down on one side, rising on the other, the configuration leapt out in his memory. When he reached the tee junction, he turned left automatically, following the larger road up as it climbed the ranges to the west of the town.

He knew this road, he thought, energy returning with the recognition. He would follow it for six or seven miles and there would be a right-hand turn, onto a narrow gravel road. An image rose unbidden in his mind's eye, hovering about the lit-up asphalt of the road ahead of him. The house had been huge, and ugly. Like a fortress built into the ravine wall, no exterior windows visible, the front door oversized and forbidding.

He let out his breath and pressed on the accelerator, glancing down at his watch.

Dean and Ellie had been trapped in the cave for over two hours now.

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

They heard the roar of the fetch at the end of the tunnel, tendrils of wind pushing in and making the oil lamp's flame flicker and bend.

"Past the salt?" Dean asked, watching the stirred-up dust start to fall again, the lamp flame pulled abruptly toward the entrance for a moment, then straightening out.

"Not yet," Ellie said, looking at the dark hole. "It's still poking around, seeing how strong the defences are, not trying to break through."

"Waiting's killing me," he commented, stretching up to loosen the kinks in his neck and back.

Ellie gave him a wry look. "Personally speaking, I'm in no rush to have it in here. And besides," she added. "I told you to go."

He smiled, eyes closing as he leaned his head back against the wall.

"I look like a ditchable prom date to you?" he retorted, the words coming out without thought and both hearing it at the same, in their memories, the old man and his affronted whiskey-roughened voice.

"Uh … fuck," Dean said, rubbing a hand over his forehead. "I – I miss him."

He felt her shoulder, against his, and lifted his arm, curling it around her. The rage against Roman, against everyone and everything that'd taken the people he needed seemed to have gone, he thought uncomfortably, the chill that rippled down his back diffused somewhat by her warmth beside him. What was left was memory and grief.

"Did I – uh – did I tell you about the time Bobby convinced me and Sam that he'd seen a marsh glimmer?" he asked, his voice a little too high.

"No," she said. She moved closer to him, her head dropping to his shoulder. "You never did."

"Uh, well," he said, clearing his throat until he sounded more like himself. At least to him. "I was twelve. Sammy was, uh, eight. Dad dropped us off to track down some equipment he needed from Caleb."

"We were, uh, feeling bummed, about being there, you know," he continued. He'd been feeling bummed that his father hadn't let them go with him. It hadn't been long after the ghost mine thing in New Mexico, and he'd started to wonder if his dad had meant what he'd said about that.

"Anyway, Bobby figured he'd cheer us up, I guess."

 _Behind the old man's salvage yard, there'd been marshes for a few miles, and Bobby'd spun them a story about the glimmers and bog fey that lived in them. He remembered looking at the hunter sceptically. Remembered his little brother's enthusiasm for the idea._

"It was summer, and there were storms around, a lot of the time," he said. "Lotta static buildup in the atmosphere, I guess."

 _They'd gone out after dark, picking their way through the soft ground carefully, the moisture cracking and popping under their feet, the song of the frogs and insects loud enough to drown out most thought._

" _Hold up here a sec," Bobby'd said, turning off his flashlight and holding up a hand._

 _They'd stopped, and the marsh'd been glowing, eerily green against the dark night sky. A ball of greenish light had been playing around pools, bouncing and meandering over the surface of the saturated ground._

" _What's that?" Sam'd asked, his voice still a child's, breathless and high._

" _Bog fey," Bobby'd told them. "Spirits of water and earth combined, come out when the energy in the atmosphere is high, looking for mischief."_

" _Wow."_

"I didn't know if I should believe him or not," Dean admitted to Ellie. "It got closer and – I don't know – maybe there was a current or something near us, but it did this sharp turn and made a beeline straight for us and Sam jumped back, and I went back into the water."

 _The discharged had zapped through him, from ankle through his balls and up to his hair, the smell of it, a faint odour of burning metal, cooking batteries, surrounding him._

"Bobby was laughing his ass off," he told her. "And Sammy's eyes were like saucers. He said I'd glowed green for a second."

She snorted against his chest. "Took your mind off things, didn't it?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "I got him back, later that night. Tied some thread to a bunch of pots and pans and to his whiskey bottle. Middle of the night, he goes to get a drink and the whole lot came crashing down, scared the crap outta him."

That drew a real laugh from her, and he smiled in response. Bobby hadn't stopped cursing for nearly five minutes. He'd learned some pretty good phrases, sitting on the stairs and listening to him.

He didn't know when it'd started, not exactly. When his father had blown the friendship with Bobby to pieces and had kept them away, he'd accepted the loss like all the others, another casualty of their life. He hadn't really even thought of the grizzled hunter until John had been taken and he'd realised he needed help – they needed help – to get him back.

 _You know, your surrogate daddy's still awake and screaming in there. And I want him to know how it feels, slicing the life out of you._

The demon's strength had been unbelievable and he'd watched, unable to move, as the knife in its hand – in Bobby's hand – had lifted slowly, then flashed down. Into Bobby.

"It took me a long time to get it," he said, his voice low, hesitantly feeling for the words he needed. "Really get what he meant to us, me and Sam."

A lot – most, he thought, feeling a frisson of the anger stirring, down low – of their good childhood memories were set in Sioux Falls. Listening to Bobby's scratchy voice reading bedtime stories to Sammy. Learning to throw a baseball, a football, learning about the different engines and types and how to pull them down, how to make the cars and trucks work again. Hunting for rabbit and deer, grouse and duck, through the woods and marshes. Learning how to play poker. Learning how to be a man.

 _He'd seen the new razor in the bathroom cupboard and had lifted it down, glancing up at the mirror at the uneven growth that'd been shadowing his jaw for the past few weeks. It looked easy enough, he'd thought, reaching for the can of shaving cream on the shelf. He'd watched his father discreetly. The cream'd almost exploded out of the can and he'd lathered it on, too much, so much he couldn't even see his cheeks and jaw and throat. The razor'd glided through the stuff, clagging up too fast and then there'd been a bright, sharp pain on his chin and the cream'd turned red._

" _Wha– t'hell?" Bobby's voice had growled from the doorway and he'd jumped guiltily, swinging around._

 _He'd seen the smile, swiftly hidden, as the hunter had pushed the door open and walked in, shaking his head at him._

" _Used too much of this stuff, Dean," Bobby'd told him, his voice mild as he'd picked up a face cloth, wet it down and wiped the fluffy shaving cream from his face._

" _Gotta be able to see what you're doin'," the hunter'd said, taking the razor from him and rinsing it then handing it back._

" _Jus' a little." Bobby gave him the can and he squirted out a quarter-sized dollop onto his palm._

 _Without the foaming mountains of stuff on him, he'd been able to see his skin and the razor'd glided over it, taking the barely-there hair with it. Bobby'd been standing behind him, his advice on how to tackle the problematic areas quiet and reassuring. By the time he'd finished, the nick on his chin had clotted._

"He let us be kids, when we were there," he said.

Ellie listened, aware he wasn't really talking to her, but to himself.

She had, over the years, worked through the journals left by Bill Harvelle, by Jim Murphy and Caleb Bieder, the collection Bobby'd saved from Rufus Turner's place, after that hunter's death. Seen individually, they'd been interesting puzzles. Read together, those puzzling pieces had formed a near-complete view of the lives of the hunters, even when the journals hadn't offered much in the way of personal information.

Dean needed that picture, she thought, hearing the pain in his voice. He'd read some of Jim's journals. It wasn't enough. His feelings about his family, about his father, were still too tangled up for him to accept. She'd been hoping that someday he could've talked some of it over with Bobby, get it straight for himself. That hope was gone now.

"I think, if Dad hadn't screwed it up so bad, he would've let us stay with him a lot more," Dean continued, his expression hardening at the memory.

Bobby'd told her he'd been too hard on the man, the day John'd had to take Bill's body to Ellen. He'd said he'd even known at the time, but his worry about the boys had overruled his good sense and he'd pushed too hard.

"My whole life, I loved him so much. Tried so hard to be like him, to be what he wanted me to be –" He shifted against the wall, and Ellie felt his body tense. "– and he lied to me, didn't tell me what was going on – he pushed me and Sam into his army against Yellow Eyes and he didn't – didn't even –"

He sucked in a deep breath, eyes closing. "Bobby let us be," he said.

Looking down at his hand, curled into a fist in his lap, Ellie forced down the desire to get it out now. Get it clear, once and for all. It wasn't the right time, she knew. Not with the grief filling him and the anger at Roman and the fear that thrummed in him for his brother. There'd be a better opportunity, she told herself, biting her lip to keep herself from speaking. A better time, when he'd be able to listen.

"You don't know how many times he put his life on the line for us. How many times he just left whatever he was doing to come and help us."

He hunched down a little, as the grief he'd swallowed, had pushed down and away, finally came to the surface.

"He would've died for us." His face screwed up, head ducking away. "He _did_ die for us. I don't … know … how we're supposed to go on without him."

Ellie straightened up, turning and putting her arms around him. She felt him shaking, fighting against his pain, struggling to keep it inside.

"Don't fight it, Dean," she whispered, softly against his cheek. "Let go. Bobby wouldn't have wanted to be another wound in your heart."

"I c-c-can't!" he gritted, sucking air in through his closed teeth. "I can't let this go now. Not yet."

Regaining his control, he shook his head, his eyes bright. "Not until Roman's dead. Not until this is over." He turned to look at her, his focus almost laser-intense. "I gotta keep the anger, Ellie. I have to."

"Okay," she said, sitting back. "Okay."

"It's not okay," he contradicted immediately. "I know it's not, but there's – fuck it, I can't see another way."

She realised why he and Sam weren't talking.

"It's not for revenge," he said, voice dropping. "I know that's not worth it, alright? It's – uh, preventative. If you're right, about these things, if they're all on a single switch – I gotta be ready."

She sighed and nodded. More and more, it was looking like they were a single-mind organism, and would remain that way unless – or until – they began to breed. Cloning was limiting if world dominion was the final goal.

At the mouth of the tunnel, a clattering of stones drew her attention, her concentration focussing as she heard the whistle of wind, getting closer.

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

Sam slowed the car as he came to the end of the road. The wall of rock looked the same, he realised, even allowing for the difference in lighting, the car's headlights throwing the oddly-shaped house built into it into sharp relief. It looked, he thought, like a castle designed by a delusional mind.

Swinging the car around in the gravelled turn-about, he stopped in front of the wide, stone portico and turned off the engine. He wasn't so far from town, but high on the ridge, surrounded by forest and the looming peak in front of him, he felt as if he could have been hundreds of miles from anyone. The silence of the place was as thick as honey.

In the east, the sky was beginning to lighten, but he thought as he opened the door and got out, the sunshine wouldn't reach here until much later, the mountain casting a black shadow over the trees, over the house and road.

Going around to the trunk to get a flashlight and weapons, he thought about the last time they'd been here and what Ellie'd said about the circle that had to be somewhere inside. He reached in, under the false floor and withdrew a silver knife, slipping it through his belt, then began to pack the small gear bag with the other items he thought he might need. He still had no idea of how he was going to find something he and Dean had been unable to find the first go-round.

The front door was closed but unlocked, exactly as they'd left it seventeen years ago. Pushing it open cautiously, he puzzled over that. In this day and age, even the most derelict of places were broken into, anything of value taken. The flashlight's beam slid over the door's surface and he caught sight of something in that oblique light, visible only at that angle. The runes were unfamiliar, but they were runes, he thought, tilting the light. Woven into an interlocking ward. He felt a trace of unease as he stepped over the threshold, wondering if whatever had been worked into that ward had been stronger originally. County records had showed the place had never been sold, never been claimed by the county for back taxes even.

As he reached for the door handle, he hesitated, a sudden, vivid image filling his mind's eye – the door closing, and disappearing completely, himself searching for a way out until he was old and grey. He blinked it away, trying for a derisory smile at the fantastic image but he left the door ajar and turned around to shine the flashlight over the huge entrance hall, his breath leaving his throat in a faint whistle at the sight.

Three storeys high, extending back eighty feet into the ravine wall, it was a giant and rather utilitarian box; the walls and ceiling of concrete, the floor flagged with giant tiles of the same. Two large wall-hangings, both primitive, covered two of the walls, the only furnishings he could see in the room. A timber and iron staircase climbed around the right-hand side and back walls, leading to a narrow gallery just under the domed ceiling and as the flashlight picked out the details, he realised that the ceiling had been cast into circles, covering every inch of the space and protecting every inch of the floor below. Traps, he realised, moving to the foot of the stairs and staring up. From the Keys of Solomon, from India and Egypt, Persia and China and, he thought, squinting at the characters in one tightly packed circle, Japan.

He didn't remember seeing those there when they'd checked out the place, but he thought, they were all plainly protective, he might not have registered them. The witch who'd lived here, who'd used her natural psychic gifts and magpie's collections of spells and knowledge and lore to kill whole families for the most trivial of reasons, hadn't liked to leave things to chance.

Dropping his gaze, he looked left to right. Opposite each other, large doors pierced the thick walls. The one to the left had led to the living areas of the house, he thought. The one to the right to the dining room, kitchen and utility rooms. Turning to the left, he hoped he'd remember more than the vague impressions he had; a glance at his watch reminding him his brother had been trapped for almost three hours.

* * *

It took him another half hour to realise why they hadn't been able to find the circle or circles the first time.

The house was large, but there had to be a lot more of it somewhere. The rooms he'd searched were ordinary; rooms for living in, not for the practise of the occult. He hadn't even found what could be considered a library anywhere. The shelving that lined most of the living room's walls had been filled with fiction and biographies, general reference books, and the only volume of note was an old, beautifully-kept edition of The Lord of the Rings, lying open on a side table. Everywhere he'd looked, sigils and wards and guards had been worked into the walls and floors, cast into the concrete, set in the tiling, engraved into the stone. Irena Falconer had been protecting something, he thought, and not just herself.

Looking around again at the huge kitchen, one of the few rooms on the ground floor to have a window, he scowled at the big range and the doors leading to pantries and root cellars.

It was all a front, he guessed, her real life had been hidden, somehow.

And nothing had been touched. Dishes, cutlery, glassware and table linen were still in the cupboards and drawers, a little dusty, but nothing like it should've looked after seventeen years. The books, he thought, walking out of the kitchen and along the hall, past dining room and what seemed to be a still room, a craft room and downstairs bath, weren't that dusty either, despite being on open shelves.

Magic? Good building work? He crossed the entrance hall and stopped in the living room. The furniture in there, oversized sofas and armchairs, still dwarfed by the proportions of the room, had been covered with dust sheets, but even they were barely coated.

She'd had the house built, he thought, sinking down onto the edge of a large armchair. Had had plenty of money, keeping the local builders and imported ones as well, busy for more than a year on the place. The plans had been filed with the county, but his father had noted in the journal that the plans didn't match up to the size of the place.

Of course not, he thought, pushing himself out of the chair and walking to the bookcases built against the far wall.

He began to move along the shelving, staring at the fine, engraved detail on uprights and shelf edges, trying to judge the thickness. A woman who left nothing to chance wouldn't leave her secrets in plain view – until it didn't look like plain view, he thought. Irena had built a fortress, but that wasn't enough.


	5. Chapter 5 Acceptance

**Chapter 5 Acceptance**

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

Wind rushed down the tunnel, sending a spiralling vortex of dust and debris into the cave.

Ducking his head and shutting his eyes, Dean reached for Ellie, pulling her closer, thick dust showering them, getting into mouths and noses, coating skin and lashes and hair. And, abruptly, stopping.

He shook himself, spitting out a mouthful of dirt and wiping his arm over his face.

"What the hell just happened?"

"Got past the salt," Ellie said, brushing ineffectively at the film of dust on her face.

She grabbed her pack and opened it, pulling out a box of travel wipes and handing him a couple, taking a couple more and scrubbing the grime from her skin.

"We don't have much time," she added, wadding up the filthy, no-longer moist cloths and peering into the bag. "That labyrinth trap is a simple one, it won't take that long for it to figure the way through."

She pulled out a couple of plain, cotton scarves, handing one to him and knotting the second one around her neck. Taking the square, he did the same, pulling out his phone and looking at it.

"No signal."

Ellie nodded, seemingly unsurprised. Or resigned, he thought. He couldn't tell which.

"Too much static."

"So, when it comes here, if we don't suffocate, we – uh – got what to look forward to? Being ripped to pieces?" he asked, grimacing internally at the question.

Ellie smiled, looking around the tiny cave. "Not much to use here, but, um, yeah. It'll be compressed by the limitations of this space, but not in speed." She cocked her head at him. "Ever been in a sandstorm in the desert?"

He shook his head. "No."

"Not fun," she remarked. "Wind speed can get high enough to use any debris, even just dirt or sand, to scour the clothes from your body and the skin from your bones, if you're in it long enough."

"Wow, good times," he said, his gaze moving around. "So, we should, uh, what? Layer up?"

"Won't help." She shrugged. "In the desert, a sandstorm's winds might reach a couple of hundred of miles per hour," she added. "The elemental will be able to generate much faster speeds than that."

He frowned at her. "You're telling me we got nothing?"

"Uh, well –" she started to say, then stopped, her gaze losing focus as she stared at the entrance, the small crease back between her brows.

"Ellie?"

"Uh, yeah, no, there might be something," she said, blinking and turning her head to look at him. "How much crap landed in the oil?"

He turned and leaned toward the lamp. "It's, uh, still burning. Got a lot of shit floating on the top."

"That's okay, so long as the wick's not covered."

"So, uh, what's the plan?"

She shrugged. "Wait. Stay alive if we can," she said, a grin lifting her mouth as she saw his expression. "You ever meet a hunter, Snake Montgomery?"

He leaned back against the wall, belatedly recognising what she was doing. There was nothing to do, no preparations they could make they hadn't already. Burning up energy in tension and going over what could happen was wasteful of their resources, she'd told him, more than once. He drew in a breath, coughing up the dirt still coating his throat.

"No, never heard of him," he said, wiping his mouth and running his tongue around his teeth.

"We should go see him, sometime," she said, leaning back against the rock beside him.

"Why? He got the secrets to the universe?"

"Sort of," Ellie said, a one-sided smile dimpling her cheek. "Makes the finest white lightning this side of Tennessee."

He snorted in surprise, mouth curving up involuntarily. "In that case, yeah, we should."

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

Sam stared at the shelving in frustration. He'd pushed, prodded, pulled and hit every span and every shelf with no result whatsoever. There was something there, he was sure of it. The wall thickness behind the shelving was wrong for the rooms on the other side of the living room, but he couldn't figure the way in.

 _Stop looking at the damned thing_ , he scolded himself when his gaze again slipped down to his watch. Almost four hours and the thought of them, lying in a circle of arterial spray, torn into pieces, jittered at the edge of his mind, never mind he knew it wasn't helping his concentration to let those images anywhere near him.

He looked back at the books. These shelves were just fiction, recent paperbacks crammed in with New York Times best seller hardbacks, mostly direct from the publishers, he thought. A title snagged his attention.

 _The Sword in the Stone._

That seemed out of place here, Sam thought, taking a step closer. He ran his gaze across the rest of the titles on the shelf. Jackie Collins. Tom Clancy. Judith Krantz. Nora Roberts. Then another one that didn't belong … _The Once and Future King_ , also by T. H. White.

Looking from one to the other, he reached out, an idea coalescing quickly. He pulled out _The Sword in the Stone_ and heard a faint noise, somewhere behind the shelf. Turning to the second book and grabbing the spine, he drew it out slowly, the same noise repeating, a little more loudly.

Letting out a gusty exhale of relief, Sam scanned the shelves above and below the two books, looking for the next one.

There. Jammed in between Robert Ludlum and Danielle Steel, the cover of _Le Morte d'Arthur_ was almost unnoticeable. He pulled it out.

Click. Clack. Much louder now.

On the shelf above, he found three books together. Stewart's _The Crystal Cave_ , _The Hollow Hills_ and _The Last Enchantment_ were out of place alongside Archer, Koontz, Hailey and Robbins and he used both hands to ease the three out together, stepping back as a final loud click was followed by the shelf's shuddering movement.

Pushing at it, he grinned as it swung inward, showing a huge, oval room that was lined from ceiling to floor with fitted shelves, rails and ladders providing access to the higher ones and to the two galleries high above. Four long curving, freestanding shelves made a smaller inner barrier and in the centre, under the coloured, lead-glass skylights set into a domed ceiling, two long, polished tables took up the centre of the room, a grouping of armchairs faced a deep hearth to the right.

Book placement locks had been highly popular in old British crime novels, the sort that specialised in locked-room mysteries and manors of the aristocracy. He couldn't help the way delight widened his grin when he thought of what his brother would say about it.

Walking into the room, he veered to the side to read the titles on one curving shelf. _The Wards and Sigils of the Eighth Choir._ Titles in Greek and Latin, in Arabic and Russian. _Demon Traps from the Kingdoms of Persia._ _The Deflection and Misdirection of Ancient Runes_.

That was more like it.

Nodding absently to himself, he turned to look at the rest of the room. Set in the opposite wall, a pair of glass-paned doors led to another room, and he walked quickly across to them.

They opened into a large study, more books, older he thought, filled the shelving that lined the walls. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of hand-bound texts and manuscripts, scrolls and ribbon-tied bundles of paper had been shoved in among them. A huge desk of very dark wood took up most of the room close to the centre. Three display cases were positioned around the room, holding what looked like artefacts or objet d'art. One held an illuminated manuscript, the gleam of gold lettering catching his eye. He couldn't see any other exits.

 _But witchy Irena had been a lover of secrets_ , he reminded himself, looking more carefully around the room. And she'd built the place … and doing heavy-duty spell work needed a lot of room.

In between two stands of shelving on the right-hand side of the room, there was a statue, almost life-sized. Walking closer, Sam saw the sculptor had managed to get the likenesses of three women, blending yet distinct, into the single face. To the left, the skin was smooth and young-looking, to the right, it was aged and wrinkled, twisted up around the eye. In the centre, the impression was of maturity but not age.

Witches had worshipped the Triple Goddess for hundreds, probably thousands, of years. _Artemis_ , _Aphrodite_ and _Hecate_. _Diana_ , _Venus_ and _Trivia_. The names changed, but the archetypes didn't. The Maiden. The Mother. The Crone. Around the statue's neck, an intricately carved necklace showed the moon symbolically, the design showing and combining the three phases.

He touched the necklace. Nothing happened. Chewing on the inside of his cheek, Sam reached out and patted every part of the statue, brow furrowing up as he got the same disappointing result.

Staring at the statue, he tried to force himself to think harder. Faster.

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

"Alright," Dean said, brows drawing together. "Let's say I buy all of this, just for a second, and it's all true –"

"Mm-hmm."

"Even if we could get to Roman, we can't kill him."

Ellie gave him a slightly irritable stare. "Oh, you were expecting the 'Complete-Save-the-World-Blueprint' pack? With the passwords and the magical death ray? Yeah, I must've left that –" She looked down, patting her pockets and peering into the backpack before looking back at him. "– in my other truck."

"Heh, okay, but c'mon –"

"Dean, at the moment, these things aren't making more little levis, but that's not going to stay that way," she said.

"Yeah, I got that." He waved a hand around. "What I'm not seeing is how to get on top of them before anything else happens."

"Maybe we need to do this the old-fashioned way?"

"What 'old-fashioned way'?" he asked, an frustrated edge to his voice.

"Surveillance," she said. "We know Roman's headquarters. We know most of his board are levis –"

"You wanna – what? Go down and take pictures and plant tracking devices?" he asked incredulously. Shaking his head, he continued, "Besides, Frank's surveilling the crap out of them and so far – nada."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to go in there with every piece of high-end, totally lethal military equipment I can get my hands on and blow the ever-living hell out of all them," he snapped, his face screwing up. "But even that probably wouldn't work."

"Probably not," she agreed wryly. "So …"

"Back to sneaky. Yeah. Right."

"Look, we've got people working on the 'how' non-stop," Ellie reasoned, laying her hand on his arm and feeling the knotted tension there. "Patrick's combing the older texts, Ray's going through every anomalous case in every federal database he can access and you've got Frank keeping an eye on what Roman Enterprises is into –"

"And none of it's working."

"But it will," she said certainly. "We both know there's always a way."

"They cloned us," he said, after a moment. "They should've known all about Whitefish. Everything about us." He turned his head to look at her. "All about you."

She nodded. "That bugged me too. You killed those two," she went on. "Maybe they hadn't – I don't know – downloaded? Before you did it?"

"Yeah. Maybe." He looked away. "You think that's voluntary? Something, they, uh, have to think about doing?"

"Going from the model we're using, the aspens, then yeah, I think each of them is quite individualistic, even though they're all connected to Roman," Ellie said. "That levi, in New Orleans … it recognised me, but not well, not clearly. Like something it'd seen or heard about once, a while ago and couldn't quite place in context."

He thought about Chet, before he was zapped. After he was zapped even, he remembered with a frown. Down in the cabin's basement and being questioned and wouldn't the others have known about the boron pump packs when they'd raided that warehouse in Jersey if that'd been … downloaded?

"Doesn't make it any easier," he said, looking back at her.

She grinned at him, teeth white against the grime on her face. "C'mon, maybe just a little."

Something pressed hard, inside him, and he swallowed against the feeling, dropping his gaze. He'd never been able to figure out what it was, exactly, about her that made him feel as if anything could be possible, so long as she was around. It wasn't anything she did or said. Wasn't attitude or background or even knowledge, so far as he could tell. Or, maybe it was all of those things, the combination of all of those things. He wasn't sure.

The memory came back suddenly and without warning or reason. Standing by the pool table in the roadhouse, watching Ellie and Sam sitting at the bar; Jo standing beside him, her emotions flicking over her face.

He'd told Jo that at any other time he'd've hit on her so fast, her head would've been spinning. At the time, it hadn't been a lie. She'd been easy on the eye and she'd liked him, he'd seen that, more clearly the more time they'd spent at Ellen's place. But he hadn't told her that's all it would've been.

Not just because of his father's death, or the way events were spiralling around his little brother like water circling a fucking drain; not even because of the woman sitting beside him now, although he wondered how much impact she'd had on him, back then … he could recall the way something had trembled between them, not often, just every now and then. He remembered the way he'd watched her, when she'd been with them.

It'd been something inexplicable, out of his experience, that connection. Something he'd tried not to look at. Something he thought Jo had seen, prompting her questions and her anger.

It hadn't really mattered. When he'd looked at Jo, he'd seen a pretty girl and that was about it. He'd wondered back then, what that'd meant, that … lack … of feeling. Jo'd been a hunter. In most of the ways that counted, he could've been himself with her, in a way that'd been impossible with Cassie or with Lisa.

But he hadn't wanted Jo. Had wanted something else. He slid a sideways glance at Ellie. Had wanted some _one_ else, maybe. Not even knowing it. Not thinking about it. Had wanted more than he ever thought he'd be allowed to have.

 _Everybody leaves you, Dean. You notice that?_

His eyes squeezed shut, trying to push that memory back to the depths, knowing it wouldn't stay buried. It hadn't been Mary Winchester, but it had, telling him the things he'd tried not to admit to himself. Had tried to never think about.

"What?" Ellie asked, and he felt her move closer, her strange sense of knowing how he was feeling catching at him.

Making an effort to shove all the crap back down, he shook his head. "Nothing," he said, opening his eyes and looking at her. The lie was probably visible on his face, he thought, at least to her, but he didn't know how to talk about those thoughts, didn't even know how to deal with those feelings. "Nothing important."

She didn't push, nodding and settling herself more comfortably against his shoulder.

In the tunnel, dust stirred and kicked, a low moan breathed through the rock.

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

Sam paced up and down the study's length, his teeth grinding unnoticed as he tried to come up with a new idea. Swinging around at the end of the room, he strode back to the offending sculpture.

"Open Sesame!"

The statue, with its three slyly carved faces, stared blandly back at him.

"Goddamn it! Open! Move!"

Had it been just his imagination and frustration, he wondered, eyes widening, or had the stone figure trembled a tiny bit?

"Open!" he yelled at it, focussing on the shoulder of the statue.

Nothing.

"Move!" he commanded, at a slightly lower volume. The shoulder did seem to tremble, very slightly.

"Mmmmmm –" he tried and the faint vibration was repeated.

"Password," he muttered to himself. The witch had been a fantasy fan, he thought, his glimpse of the book lying open in the living room returning with a mental slap.

"Mordor!"

The statue's tremor was the same. There … but nothing more.

"Mearas!"

Again, the statue quivered faintly, but it didn't move.

"C'mon, think, think," Sam berated himself, turning away from the wall. "I'm a fan, I've read the books, seen the movies … I want to keep my secrets safe from the real evil in the world … aside from myself … I want something that's obvious to me but not to another witch – or demon – or angel … what would I use?"

The scene popped into his head immediately and he swung back to the wall, frowning. It couldn't be that easy … could it?

 _Speak, friend, and enter._

"Mellon!"

The statue rumbled, shaking as the heavy base ground along tracks beneath it, and it swung away, the wall behind it cracking along a line above it, and down two sides.

"Unbelievable," Sam breathed, watching the passageway open. He could hear his brother's voice, loud in his head, the well-used insult drawn-out sarcastically … guh-eek!

If Dean'd been there, he'd've been bitching about it taking so long for his little brother to figure it out, he knew. He grinned humourlessly to himself, flicking on the flashlight and walking to the dark doorway. Better late than never.

The corridor behind the wall was narrow but short, a flight of stone steps leading down. Sam looked at them. The edges were still sharp and clear. They were unworn. One woman had used these stairs and not for very long.

A soft draught filled the narrow passage and he caught the scents of herbs on it, taking a step toward the stairs.

 _Hang on, bro, almost there._

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

"He turned up, you know," Dean said, staring fixedly at the entrance. "At the hospital. Roman."

"For what?" Ellie asked.

"To gloat? To make sure Bobby died? Rub our faces in how fucking untouchable he was? I don't know," he grated, his hand tightening into a fist as he rubbed it over his temple. "There was nothing I could do, Ellie. Nothing."

His eyes screwed shut and she moved closer.

"Bobby was – uh – he was – lying there, dying. In that goddamned – god-damned – bed, and Sam wanted – Sam wanted me to – uh – huh," he choked back a half-laugh, his eyes rolling up. "Brace myself."

"Dean –"

"Why was I the only one who believed in him, Ellie?" He ducked his head, twisting away from her. "Why couldn't anyone else fight for him? Why couldn't he fight? So I – I – didn't – uh – have – "

"Dean," she repeated, more gently, putting her arm around his shoulder. "You really believe Bobby didn't fight to stick around? Come on."

"He didn't fight hard enough!" he said, the words coming out half-strangled. "I didn't fight hard enough!"

She felt the shudders, racing through him, one after another and tightened her hold on him, the muscles under her arm hardening to steel.

The idea, that he could've done more, something else, anything else, was a torment, but she knew he didn't believe it, not really believe it. It was a reaction against the helplessness he'd been feeling for a while now. There was nothing he could've done to save Bobby. There was nothing he could do to help his brother against the wounds in Sam's mind. And there was nothing he could do – right now, at least – to stop the levis from executing their plans and turning the population into mild-mannered, over-eating zombies.

It wasn't even Bobby's death so much that was tearing him up so badly inside, she recognised slowly. It was being boxed in by things he couldn't do anything about, those jammed-up and repressed emotions getting stronger as minutes and hours and days ticked away and he felt he was incapable of taking any action.

"I-I'm alright," he said, coughing a little as he tipped his head back. He dragged in a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "I don't know why I can't stop seeing that."

"It won't go away, not even because you need it to," she said, keeping her voice neutral. He already felt too vulnerable, she knew, even with her.

"Yeah, well, it's gunna have to," he told her, or himself, she wasn't sure which, his voice and expression becoming pugnacious. "Dammit, this – this is the wrong time. That's all. Wrong time and it's sure as hell the wrong place."

She didn't disagree. She didn't think there was going to be a right time or right place for him to deal, not with Bobby's death, not with his bottled-up grief, not with all the deaths he had to face, sometime. But he was hanging on by a thread and he didn't need to face those things yet, not right now. Like the conversation about his father, it would have to wait.

Dust stirred at the entrance to the cave and she turned to look, seeing the skirls rising.

"It's coming through."

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

Sam looked around the big workroom. Tables and shelves filled the space, heaped and stacked with sacks and barrels and jars and bowls of the raw ingredients the witch had used, her tools tossed down amongst the clutter as if she'd just left. He still couldn't believe nothing in the house had been touched.

Two more doors led off from the room, and he shook his head at them, already sick of the warren she'd built into the mountain.

Striding across the room to the furthest door, he yanked it open, shining his flashlight around. It was empty and bare, but from the smudges on the floor, he thought it was a casting room. There wasn't an intact circle in there. Leaning against one wall, an old-styled broomstick of birch twigs was dusty with different coloured chalk.

Leaving the door open, he turned abruptly away and headed for the other one. It opened easily as well, the room pitch black inside. Sam swung his flashlight around, playing it along the walls and floor, stepping inside as the beam picked up the designs that had been engraved into and painted onto the stone.

From myth and legend as diverse as the library he'd come through, sigils patterned the walls – to deflect the eye, to create illusion, to appease certain entities and entreat others – guards and wards of different countries and cultures, for the different planes and for each of the levels within those planes. On the floor, dozens of circles had been dug out of the stone, some touching, others separated from the rest, large and small, several interlinked for some greater purpose …

Not just engraved, but with more powerful elements inlaid into the stone, he corrected himself, dropping to one knee to look more closely at the circle near his feet, the beam of the flashlight picking out the satiny surface of poured metal, the sparkle of crystal mosaics.

He got to his feet, the light flashing around the room again. His father's journal had speculated that Irena Falconer had been a middle level witch, he remembered. Not one capable of needing or using a room like this one. And, he thought, feeling disappointment rise like bile in his throat, of all the circles he could see, not one of them glowed with power. They were dark and quiescent against the stone floor.

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

Ellie pulled the scarf up over her nose and mouth, turning to look at Dean. "No matter what you see, don't do anything."

"What?" He dragged the cloth over his nose, his instincts prickling in alarm as she crawled away from him to the centre of the cave. "Ellie –"

The elemental came in with a rush, its force picking up every grain of dirt and sand in the small space, dousing the oil lamp instantly and plunging them into darkness and a shrieking, stinging, howling chaos.

Eyes narrowed to slits, Dean reached out and grabbed the flashlight, flicking it on and swinging the beam around wildly. Through the almost constant strobing effect of the debris-filled whirlwind, he caught glimpses of her, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cave and fierce wind, her hair pulling free of its braid, tugged upward with the gyrations of the wind. Rocking forward onto his knees, he pushed against the power of the fetch, one arm over his face.

" _ELLIE!_ "

His yell was drowned out completely by the roaring wind, the thick lens of the light battered and scoured; less light was getting through the miasma of dust with every minute. He felt a shove, the elemental's form almost visible in the movement of the fine particles it contained, huge hands hitting him in the chest, knocking him back against the wall. His skull bounced off the rock and he shook his head, fingers scrambling to find the dropped flashlight.

From a distance of only a few feet, he could see its shape, no longer spinning around the entire cave, drawing inward and focussing its energies. The clouds of dust and dirt filled the air like fog, falling slowly, spinning and swirling in the beam of his light, but even through the murk he could see Ellie – and he could see the way the fetch's hands closed around her neck.

* * *

Ellie felt its fingers, thick and solid, pressing against her skin, closing harder around her throat and she set her teeth, eyes squeezed shut against the constant peppering of sand and dirt and small detritus on her face, ignoring the abrasions, and the cuts and bruising left by the larger pieces.

She'd only done this twice; once with Michael's help and guidance; the second time alone, an attempt at far-sight that'd lasted only seconds.

In her mind's eye, she visualised the symbol her subconscious had been trained to recognise as a trigger, focussing on it more and more intensely, shutting out the noise and pain, shutting out her fear and knowledge of the mindless but lethal force she faced.

There was only room for one thought, one intent, and she felt the strange, tightening sensation that preceded the act she needed, a pulling sensation, through every organ, through the pathways of her nervous system, becoming more and more intense in her abdomen, throbbing there, heat building.

 _Meditation gives you the tools you need_. Michael's voice returned to her, as clear and low as if he sat next to her, in the isolated silence of her mind. _Concentration, more acute than you'll use for anything else in your life, and relaxation, allowing it to happen, as naturally as breathing._

Her vision changed abruptly.

She was looking down. The thick, murky air faded to translucence then transparency and she saw the energy of the fetch, gathered and crouching in front of her body, saw her skin red and raw-looking, sand and dirt filling her hair, coating her clothing, saw the deep indentations of the elemental's fingers digging into her flesh.

 _Why most of the artificial elementals take on a human or humanoid form isn't known. It might be the most natural way for the maker to think of the thing, an unconscious part of the making that adheres to the fetch even when it's disconnected from its creator; as ghosts remember their earthly form, and the souls destined for Hell can't forget the bonds of their flesh and memories_. _But they all do._

They all did, she thought, very distantly.

It did resemble a very large man, crouching there, features snub and unformed, but the shape distinct. Broad shoulders bulging with muscle. Long arms with five-fingered hands. Long legs and a broad back and even feet, crudely done like a child's attempt at sculpture, but proportionate and clear enough to her uninvolved view.

 _You have to be careful, Ellie. It's our souls that can fly free but separation from our living bodies can rob us of emotion. You will be completely detached and it will be hard for you to remember what is so important about your body that you need to look after it, need to protect it._

She did feel that way, she recognised with that same remote disinterest. It was an object. Destined to age and die. It felt unimportant to her, even as the fetch's hands were crushing her neck, cutting off her air and blood, tightening on the vertebrae of her spine.

 _Most who are forced to fight on the astral plane cannot let go of the constraints of the body,_ Michael's voice continued to whisper to her from her memories _. They fail to recognise the difference between flesh and energy, the differences present in the natural laws, the way what was a weakness on one plane is often a strength on another. They brawl with thought forms as if they were people. Energy is directional. Opposites attract and similarities repel. High school science 101. Don't forget it_.

 _Don't be limited by your memories of strength and muscle and tendon_ , she told herself. _Remember that thought is instantaneous, no lag between it and action_.

As she focussed, everything changed again. Colour bled out of the world, leaving it a silver grey, only the near things visible, everything else shrouded in mists and indistinct. The fetch's face came into sharp focus, features clear and vaguely female over a masculine frame. She felt cold, completely divorced from the world and its properties of temperature and gravity, mass and physical limitations.

 _Concentrate_ , she reminded herself, _energy is thought_.

The disruption was instant, a focussed wedge of power that speared through the thought-form, polarising and shattering its strength.

For a heart beat, the air in the cave fell still, the dirt, leaves, twigs and stones dropping to the floor, then the elemental began to regroup, coalesce, gradually returning to the form it couldn't change.

* * *

Dean stared as the wind ceased, not slowing or weakening but stopping dead, everything it'd been carrying dropping to the cave floor. He wiped a filthy hand over his face, feeling wetness against his fingers and ignoring it.

In the centre of the cave, he could see Ellie now, in the same cross-legged position, her eyes closed and her face devoid of expression under a coating of grime, blood and swiftly-rising bruising.

"Ellie –"

He'd barely gotten the word out when the air started to move again, swirling around the cave and forcing him to squint against the flying dust that rose with it, making out the thing's shape for a second before every detail was hidden in the gritty chaos of the circling debris.

The attack seemed stronger this time, and he felt cold, belatedly realising his body's heat being drawn from him and converted by the fetch into energy.

Holding his arm over his face, he tried to see through the curtains of dust, able to only make out that Ellie hadn't moved but the thought-form was being pushed somehow, some kind of struggle with something even less visible than itself between the woman and the cave's entrance.

It took a couple of moments to register that struggle before the knowledge of what she'd done came clear to him. He'd done it himself, three times before, once when he'd been so close to death a reaper'd been waiting; the second time with the help of Pamela, the third time had been more the work of another.

 _Astral projection, out-of-body experience, soul flight, aetheric travelling, far-seeing_ … all terms for the same concept, the ability to separate soul and mind from body and travel, either on the earthly plane, or on the astral planes. His father's journal had several accounts of doing the same thing, in search of knowledge, though John had always been under the guidance of others at the time.

It wasn't exactly a surprise to find Ellie'd thought of a way to take the fight to the elemental, instead of waiting for it to kill them. It wasn't a comforting thought to realise that if it killed her in that state, or even damaged her body too badly for her soul to return to it, her efforts would have gone for nothing.

Inching across the grit-covered floor, he worked his way across the cave on his knees, one arm over his ducked head, moving by feel until he bumped into her back and stopped. He couldn't consciously or deliberately break free of his body, he thought, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back into the shelter of his body, but he could at least make sure she had something to come back to.

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

Sam swung around in the centre of the room, his gaze scanning every inch of the circle-covered floor again. None of them looked any more active than when he'd crawled across the floor ten minutes before, searching for a sign that one was powering the fetch.

Cold. Empty. Dead.

Swearing under his breath, he stopped looking, closing his eyes and letting his hand fall to his side. It had to be here, he thought, unconsciously chewing at the corner of his lip. No thought-form could hold onto the energy it needed without a focus, something to anchor and feed it. Even the souls that couldn't move on needed a tangible focus, clinging to the remains of their bodies or items cherished or treasured in life. Once those things had gone, they couldn't remain here, were swept toward the Veil, and their final destinations.

An image, long-buried but never forgotten, rose in his mind's eye. The graveyard had been filled with the stink of sulphur, the night air heated by the open gate, and his brother had been standing there, blood dripping down from the long split on his brow, tears glittering in his eyes. They'd both seen it. His father's spirit had held onto the memories of his body, too achingly familiar, smiling slightly at both of them, and had gone, rising and twisting away to an unseen doorway and another existence.

His fingers loosened without volition and the crack and tinkle of the flashlight dropping and hitting the stone floor jerked him out of the memory.

"Damn–"

The word caught in his throat as a glow appeared in his peripheral vision. He turned around to see the faint, eldritch light against the blackness of room and floor.

The circle was one of the biggest, in the corner of the room.

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

Inside, she was screaming; part rage, part agony, as the fetch's face loomed close to her, its hands slapping, squeezing and pummelling her. On the earthly plane, it had no features, no expressions or form, but here, seen within her mind's view of the astral, the almost-feminine countenance, superimposed onto a powerful male body, was clear. Was that the witch's face, she wondered remotely?

 _As energy – spirit, mind, soul – you have no nervous system, no muscles or bones or flesh or blood_ , Michael pressed from her memories. _Everything you perceive on the astral plane is a lie, a habit from living. Let it go and think in terms of energy – polarisation, attraction and repulsion, positive and negative – don't let the memories of life fool you_.

It was hard, she thought, trying to reinforce the walls in her mind, her barriers of will, against the creature that was sucking at her. Harder than she remembered from those long-ago lessons; harder than she'd imagined.

 _Do you want to live or die!?_

She wanted to live, and the thought had her mentally baring her teeth, feeling the acute jumps of kinetic energy waves in her opponent. Had always wanted it, even when it'd seemed easier to let go.

It seemed far, far away, but was aware of her body, aware that she was still tethered to it by a seemingly hair-fine and fragile cord. Even more distantly, she was also aware of Dean, trying to keep her warmer, taking the brunt of the elemental's destructive force on himself to protect her.

 _Don't let that be for nothing_ , the emotion in the mental snarl surprised her for a second, blinding her to the strength she felt in response. Use that energy, she told herself, striking out at the fetch, positive into its negative, feeling the flow reversed for a moment and the fetch faltering in its attack.

It surged back, and it felt like pain, no matter how hard she tried to tell herself it wasn't, that she couldn't perceive pain without a nervous system. Its was power greater than hers, drawing her own bodily heat and life and that of Dean's, building its strength as hers was being drained away.

 _Go deep._

The suggestion, almost a command, hit her and she twisted back from the thought-form, visualising a radiant core of strength, of power, and herself diving into it.

* * *

Under his arm, where it wrapped across her back, Dean felt Ellie's heart start to race, and then suddenly stop, resuming an irregular and weak beat a too-long moment later. He tightened his grip around her, ducking his head as the whirlwind in the cave seemed to increase its strength, the howling shriek rising to a higher pitch.

"Don't you give up!" he yelled against her ear, the words coming out muffled through the bandana covering his mouth. "Don't you do it!"

Her body shuddered in his arms, muscles twitching uncontrollably.

"Ellie – goddammit!"

Dirt and twigs and leaves were pounding them both, peppering his skin where the cloth left it unprotected. He couldn't open his eyes to see her face, feeling the scouring of the particles over his eyelids and brows, knowing that opening them even slightly would only drive the debris into them.

 _Come on, Sam_ , he thought, teeth grinding at his lack of options. That was the story of his life, wasn't it? Lack of options? Choices between bad and worse? _I'm losing her, break that fucking circle and kill this thing!_

 _What do I do if I lose everyone?_

 _Start again._

He couldn't, he thought desperately, lifting one arm to shield both of their heads against the increasing hail of detritus. He'd paid enough. Hadn't he paid fucking enough? But somewhere inside, the knowledge that what he wanted didn't matter, had never mattered, and whatever happened, it wouldn't be fair or just. It would just be.

 _Start again. And again, if need be._

 _Do you want to live?_

He didn't know. The scales weren't balanced, everything he tried, he'd failed at. All the people he'd loved, he'd lost. He needed something of his own. Something that couldn't be taken from him.

 _You might never get that._

He scowled, bowing his head against another increase in pressure of wind and sand.

 _Or maybe you already have it. Maybe_ … _maybe what you want can never be taken from you._

She jerked again and he felt the wind against them lessen for a fraction of a second. When it returned, it felt much stronger, and he grunted as the sand scraped over his hands and across his temple, leaving a stinging, aching pain in its wake, his expression screwing up with fear when he felt Ellie's heart beat stagger and stop again.

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

The knife was in his hand, not his own blade but the witch's ceremonial athame, intricately engraved silver and sharpened to a keen edge, and Sam stabbed down at the ghostly light dancing around the edge of the circle.

There was a shocking discharge of power with the contact, zapping through the blade and into his fingers. He clenched his teeth, slicing again, and the tip of the knife scraped against the metal poured into the outer curve's channel, the backlash much more powerful this time, arcing in crackling blue fire from the rim of the outer circle into him, the muscles of his hand and forearm and upper arm contracting instantly and a faint smell of burning filling his nostrils.

It threw him back, and he rolled onto his side as the broken power whipped around the circumference of the circle, sparking and snapping, the light brightening to an unbearably brilliant corona for a moment ... then exploding in the air above the circle, leaving behind complete darkness and the stink of burning metal.

Flopping onto his back, Sam let out a soft groan, trying to wriggle his fingers, skin and muscle aching. His eyes were open but they may as well've been closed, the darkness in the room completely impenetrable. He wondered if he could remember which direction he should go to find the door.


	6. Chapter 6 Silence

**Chapter 6 Silence**

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington**_

It'd always been a fascinating myth to her, hinted at rarely. She'd found a mention of it in a small collection of manuscripts, found in a monastery halfway around the world, all of which had been stamped with the same symbol. Looking for more of those works had been sidelined by other events. But she'd never forgotten them.

The power of the soul was inarguable, and her knowledge of what that power was used for, by the entities of the Divine and Accursed Planes, at least, was considerable. Aside from her now-dead mentor, and a few scattered references to yogi long turned to dust, she'd only ever found a few tantalising mentions that did suggest it was a power that humans could access.

She wasn't breathing, but it felt like breathing in. Inhaling the cosmos. It was all of who she was, and yet it was more than that. Consciousness was such a small part. For the milliseconds she floated in that power, she understood more than she could've dreamed of, and knew, with a fleeting sense of disappointment, that when she returned to an earthly existence, to her body and all its biological functions, that understanding would be gone.

 _Makes no never mind_ , Bobby's gruff voice said in her mind. _Get on with it, girl!_

Get on with it.

Imagination. Will. Reality.

In her mind's eye, the shockwave of power exploded outwards and she felt the fetch shatter and burst as it was struck. She perceived time differently here, and she saw it all clearly, the seconds stretching out. Saw too a second blast hit the elemental and scatter its energy completely, leaving nothing behind, not even a lingering ripple in aether.

Sam found the circle.

The knowledge was there, suddenly, as if she'd known it all along.

It was time to go back.

* * *

The soundless and invisible blast shuddered through the small cave, Dean's ears popping painfully as it spread outward from where the thought-form had been and sent the airborne debris into the walls.

Wiping an arm over his face, he opened his eyes cautiously, faint light from the narrow tunnel telling him day had come to the outside world, and allowing him to make out the mess the elemental had left behind.

They were coated in a thick layer of dust and sand, shredded bark, twigs and leaves, swept into the cave and picked up from its floor and now universally distributed through the interior. Ellie's pack was an undistinguished lump against the far wall, the small ceramic dish that'd held oil and wick now an equally anonymous lump of dirt on the other side of the cave.

He moved back slightly, looking down at the woman beside him.

Her hair was so thick with dirt, it was impossible to tell what colour it was. It'd been pulled free of its usual braid, and was hanging in clumps around her face and down her back. Eyes closed, her face was just as grimy, eyelashes weighed down with the sandy dirt. Her breathing was still extremely slow, the bandana over her mouth and nose not moving at all so far as he could tell.

Leaning toward her, he tugged it down. Even beneath its protection, her skin was filthy, and he tried to brush the earth and sand away, uncertain if he was supposed to say something, or attempt to wake her or what.

 _Never attempt to bring someone back from soul-separation suddenly_ , Pamela's voice spoke suddenly in his mind, the memory of talking to her about astral projection, back when he'd gone to pick her up to see if she could help Anna, returning with a discomforting urgency. _Talk them back gently, that's about all you can do until they return on their own_.

"Ellie?" his voice came out in a cracked whisper, and he cleared his throat, hawking back and spitting out mudballs from the inhaled dust.

"Uh, Ellie." He tried again, resting a hand around the back of her neck, thumb over the slow pulse of her carotid.

"C'mon, you did it–" _Or Sammy did_ , he thought. "It's gone. You need to get back here –"

 _Sometimes, people just don't find their way back_ , the memory apparently not done yet. _They get lost or they like being free of their corporeal problems too much and they just let go completely_.

Dammit, he didn't want to think about that. She wouldn't. She wanted to be here, keep fighting, be with him. He knew she did. That occasional temptation – to give it all up and throw in the towel – that was one of his, not hers.

Leaning his forehead against her temple, he closed his eyes, trying to shunt aside an anxiety that was building the longer she remained unresponsive, wondering if he really knew her as well as he thought he did.

For the first time since they'd gotten into the truck and left the burning house, he thought about what she'd told him, what he'd seen in the replay of the ghostly echoes, the last moments of her parents' lives.

She'd brushed over it; pretended, he realised now, that it wasn't such a big deal, that exclusion by her mother and father, but he knew how it felt to want – to need – someone's love, and find out it wasn't there. Knew how it left a hole that was difficult to fill, a sense of not being quite good enough. He'd spent a lot of years trying to convince himself he hadn't needed more from his father – or his brother, or telling himself that need was a weakness he had to get rid of. He thought she'd probably spent a lot of years doing the same thing.

 _What changed your mind_ , he'd asked. _You did_ , she'd told him.

He felt the shock of that answer ripple through him again, the way she'd looked at him, as if she couldn't believe he hadn't known already. Letting out a soft breath, his mouth twisted up. How the hell could've he known he could have an impact like that on someone, he wondered? He was the guy everyone left.

There were a million things he suddenly wanted to say to her, to tell her, but even here, like this, now, he couldn't make them come out, rejecting each and every one for the need in them. It was a need that made him feel too far too vulnerable, too exposed.

 _I love you_ , he'd said to her, and he'd meant it, with every fibre of his being. He still did. She'd touched a chord in him he hadn't even known existed, had given him a place to rest before he'd recognised how much he'd needed that. She'd never used what he'd told her against him. It was what lay underneath that was far more complicated.

 _Maybe … I can be saved_. He remembered the look on Sam's face as his brother had admitted that to him, blinking back tears, wishing for the redemption promised by what he'd thought was an angel. He remembered the disappointment in Sam when it'd turned out to just be a ghost. At the time, the fierce wish he'd felt, to find a way to save Sam, had been tempered by the piercing knowledge that he'd wanted the same thing for himself.

 _The things I'm willing to do for this family … it scares me._

It had. It still did. He'd brokered his soul to save his brother. He'd gone to Hell and served there and the memories of that time were finally fragmenting, some of the poison that'd been eating him had been drained away in the way he saw himself through her eyes, but the sense that there was something missing was still there. Not the hole Famine'd seen in him. Something he'd felt from a much younger age, something he'd done his best to never acknowledge.

 _I'm not strong enough._

He didn't believe – all that way, down deep, where it was just him and nobody else – that he was or would ever be. Closing his arms more tightly around Ellie, he admitted the fear unwillingly. What if he disappointed her? The way he'd disappointed his father? Or his brother? What if she saw that lack of strength in him and turned away, the way she had in his nightmares in Cicero?

The sudden gusting exhale on his neck jerked him out of those thoughts and he straightened, looking down into her face.

"Hey."

Blinking rapidly against the weight on her lashes, Ellie squinted up at him. "Hey."

"You okay?"

She gave him a ghost of a grin, her teeth white against the muck on her lips. "Still here."

Looking around, she made a face as she saw the mound of dirt covering her backpack.

"Well, that's going to be a joy to –" she started to say, pulling back from him a little.

"Wait a sec," Dean cut her off, closing the space between them again. "Just – uh – gimme a minute here, okay?"

He leaned close and felt her arms go around his neck, letting his breath out when her breath ghosted along his cheek.

"Sorry," she said, her lips grazing over his.

He shook his head slightly and pulled her closer, feeling the grit on his mouth and on hers, but no longer caring. All the things he couldn't look at, didn't want to look at, not yet, too soon, rose up with the kiss, and he pushed them back down again, telling himself he'd figure it all out later. Right now, he figured it was enough just to be here.

* * *

 _ **Thompson Falls, Montana**_

Sam looked around the study thoughtfully. There were hundreds of books here that could be useful to them, but the cabin at Whitefish wouldn't hold many of them. Still, he considered, turning for the door and crossing the library, no one had touched the house in the last seventeen years. It would probably stay safe enough until they could figure out something else.

Pulling out his phone as he closed the shelf-door behind him, he hit the speed-dial for his brother and felt the tension in his neck dissipate as Dean answered.

"Hey," Dean's voice came tinnily across the line.

"Everything okay? Ellie alright?" he asked, walking across the living room and out into the hall.

"Yeah, we're good," Dean replied, his voice dropping out for a second then returning. "No ride. Can you come and get us?"

"Take me a couple of hours, but yeah," Sam said, thinking of the distances. "You both really okay?"

"Yeah." Dean's voice held something that set Sam's nerves twitching, but he couldn't pin down what it was.

"Covered in crap, a bit bruised," his brother continued. "Your timing was good."

"Uh, good. I'll be there as soon as I can," Sam said, frowning at the phone as his brother hung up. Whatever it was that he'd heard in Dean's voice seemed to have gone with his last few words, but he felt a disconcerting need to get to the car and get to them as fast as he could.

It was, from memory, about a hundred and thirty miles. He could fill up on the way.

The more casual Dean's voice got, the worse things had probably been. He hoped that whatever'd happened, it hadn't worsened his brother's grief – or made that grief more impossible to work through.

* * *

 _ **Spokane, Washington.**_

Ellie stretched out on the shallow slope, twenty yards from the road. She shifted her shoulders against the soft bed of pine needles, finding a comfortable spot and closed her eyes to block out the sunshine, concentrating on a physical assessment.

When they'd crawled out of the narrow tunnel, they'd found the clearing in front of the cave much bigger. Trees had been uprooted and smashed down, branches and stripped leaves and needles everywhere. Dean'd whistled softly.

"What the hell–?"

"Frustration at not being able to get to us," she'd told him. The amount of power the destruction had taken had sent a shiver down her spine, a belated recognition of what she'd faced in the cave, and she'd deliberately ignored it. It was over. Sam had been in time and they were both still alive and in one piece and that was all that mattered.

Aches and pains were minor, she thought, lifting her arms and stretching them upwards. She had a pounding headache, but had the feeling that'd come more from the crash earlier than anything that'd happened in the cave.

She heard the rustle of the needles before she felt Dean settle beside her, opening an eye slightly to look at him.

He had a lump on the back of his head, and cuts and bruises but seemed otherwise fine. They'd gotten off lightly, she thought, physically, if not mentally and emotionally.

There'd been shadows in his eyes when she'd gotten a good look at him. She wasn't sure if that was due to what she'd done, or something else, but they'd need to talk it over sometime. Along with what'd come out in their conversations in the cave. Some day, she told herself. Not now.

Behind her mental walls, and seething ever higher, memory and emotion were pushing at her, wanting to get out. She couldn't believe she'd managed to kid herself for so long about the realities of her childhood. It wasn't as if she hadn't known it. More like it'd happened to someone else. A long time ago. It made sense of the way she'd lived since, she thought. Kasha and Yure, Katherine and Seb, even Marcus and Bobby … all of them surrogates for the parents she'd had but to whom she'd been little more than a burden. It was something she was going to have to deal with, sooner rather than later.

"You going to sleep?" Dean asked, his tone disbelieving.

"I might," she said, smiling a little at him. "Been up all night."

She felt his sideways gaze and sighed inwardly.

"Would it've killed you to tell me what you were gonna do?"

"There wasn't time to table a discussion," she told him, trying to keep her tone light. There hadn't been any time. The idea had occurred to her, and she'd known he'd argue against it. She'd been trying to not think about the what-ifs and might've-beens.

"It nearly strangled you."

"I wasn't in that mu–" Ellie started to protest, and he rolled onto his side, hand propped against his head as he looked down at her.

"You were, an' we both know it," he cut her off, the mild tone belying the feelings she could see in his eyes.

She let out a soft huff. "Projecting was the only way of dealing with it – and we both know that too."

It'd scared him, having to watch that. She'd known it would but there hadn't been anything she could have done or said to make it easier on him. She could feel the soreness of her throat, where the fetch's fingers had closed around it, could imagine his reactions to having seen it, and not being able to do anything to stop it. He was surprisingly old-fashioned about protecting those he was with. Or not so surprisingly, really, given the way he'd been raised and the little she knew of the man who'd done that job, but it was a trait she related more to the older generations of men, an unthinking and instinctive response.

Dean rolled away, and she heard a mutter from his direction, imagining his exasperated eye-roll without difficulty.

She closed her eyes. There hadn't been another way to do it, she was sure of that. They could have sat there, and waited for the thing to attack, for Sam to find the circle and break it, and they would probably both be dead now. She couldn't recall exactly what'd happened at the end, but she'd held it off for long enough and Sam had saved them. She'd do it again, just the same way.

Turning her head to look at him, a view of a hunched shoulder and filth-covered shirt stretching over his back, she wondered if he could live with that. She had no idea of where that fierce instinct to fight had come from, born with her or a side-effect of her childhood, reinforced over the years by her aunt and what she'd set herself to do, but it wasn't something within her power to change.

The silence stretched out between them; not hostile, just expectant, she thought. Sam would be here in another hour and a half, and she felt tired. Exhausted, if she wanted to be accurate about it.

* * *

Dean stared at the base of the tree three yards from him and tried to let the sheer flood of crap, overflowing his mind and clamping around his chest, go. If their positions had been reversed, he'd've done exactly the same thing, he knew, and he wasn't enough of a hypocrite to even try to tell himself he wouldn't've.

For most of the last six or seven years, he'd dealt with the aftermath of jobs that went bad, or had started bad and gotten worse, with a bottle or a fight or less often, a willing and anonymous partner; shedding the fear of what might've happened along with consciousness by the end of the night. He wasn't sure if that strategy had really worked, but it'd done the job on the surface alright, and he pushed aside the longing for a bottle impatiently, knowing the time for that kind of solution had gone and he needed a better way.

Bottling it up and pretending it didn't exist worked no better than physical release, usually resulting in weeks of grade 'A' nightmares as his subconscious insisted on looking at the crap and his conscious mind rebelled against it. He eased himself onto his back, sliding a sideways glance at Ellie and noting resignedly that she seemed to be asleep. How she did that was another thing that was irritatingly out of his range of expertise.

He didn't want to lose her. Didn't want to lose anyone else, if he got right down to it, but he didn't think he'd be able to find enough whiskey in the world to drown his feelings if he lost her.

 _Everyone we've lost … they were in the life, Dean. That's all it is._

Sam was right. Deliberately or accidentally, they'd been in the life. The sunlight moved slightly, finding a gap between the leaves of the tree and sliding into his eyes, and he screwed them shut.

It didn't have to be like that. He didn't think it had to be like that, he amended the thought a second later. His grandfather and grandmother had hunted together, raised his mother – his face screwed up with the memory of Mary telling him she'd hated the life, couldn't think of anything worse for her kids, but there were others, there had to be.

Would he try to get out again, he wondered? Live a normal life, if she wanted it too?

* * *

Sam pulled up on the shoulder, turning off the engine and getting out when he saw the rear end of Ellie's truck protruding from the undergrowth fifty yards down the side of the hill.

He turned around at the snap of a branch behind him, relief coursing through him at the sight of his brother and Ellie, both carrying bags of gear and climbing up between the trees.

"You weren't in the truck when that happened, were you?" he asked, jerking his thumb back at the up-ended vehicle.

"No, we hit the tree first and got out," Dean told him, his expression blandly matter-of-fact as he walked straight to the trunk of the black car. "Keys?"

Sam tossed them over and looked at Ellie. "You okay?"

She grinned at him. "Are you suggesting that I look like crap, Sam?"

"Uh – um – no – no –" he said quickly, hearing his brother's low chuckle from the car.

The grin, very white against the dirt that covered her skin, got wider. "Surprisingly okay," she said. "It could've been a lot worse, but we just need a shower."

Walking to the trunk, she passed the two black canvas duffels she carried to Dean, asking Sam over her shoulder, "What was the witch's house like?"

"Rabbit hole," Sam said, following them back to the car, his brow wrinkling up with the memories of it. "Secret doors, an unbelievable library – she had the whole shebang."

Dean's brow lifted as he slammed the trunk shut. "That why we didn't find anything the first time?"

"There was a secret door in the living room," Sam said. "With a book placement lock."

"Book – what?"

"It's very fashionable in old English manors – or at least Agatha Christie mysteries set in them," Ellie told him, turning to look at Sam. "What was she hiding?"

"Everything," Sam said, walking around to the passenger door as Dean headed for the driver's side. "A library, spell rooms, casting rooms –"

"Ellie?" Dean stopped at the driver's door, looking questioningly at her.

She shook her head and Sam realised he'd gone round to the shotgun seat automatically.

"I – uh – you can have this –"

"No, thanks." She looked at the rear seat and opened the door. "I'm going to stretch out while I've got the room."

Glancing back at his brother, Sam saw a frown appear and disappear as Dean opened the driver door and slid into the seat. He opened his door and got in, looking over his shoulder at Ellie who was wriggling into a comfortably supine position behind them.

"How'd you get into the house?" she asked, when she noticed his gaze.

"It was open."

He turned back to his brother as he saw Dean shoot him a look.

"What?"

"I think it's been open since '95 when we left," Sam told him. "Warded from one end to the other, but the front door wasn't locked."

"An' no one cleared it out – not even the TV or – or stereo – for seventeen years?" Dean asked disbelievingly.

"Everything was coated in inches of dust, but yeah, it all looked the same." Sam spread his hands in a who-knows gesture, glancing into the back.

Ellie's eyes were closed.

"What about you?" he asked Dean. "What happened?"

"What didn't?" Dean replied, his tone shifting to acerbic. "We got there, and the cabin'd been extended."

He flicked a fast look at the rear view mirror, and back at the road. "Lit it up and the fetch got free of the loop it was trapped in and came after us. Hit us about three miles out from the house and sent us off the road."

Lowering his voice a little, he continued, "Ellie told me to take off, leave her there."

There was a note of outrage in Dean's voice, Sam thought, wondering how much came from his brother knowing it probably would've been the right thing to do; and how much was a genuine incredulity that she'd told him to do it. The artificial elemental hadn't been after him. He knew Dean didn't want to hear that.

"You found a cave?"

His brother nodded. "Put a line of salt across the entrance, and she had some other gizmo, kept it out a bit longer."

Underneath the short explanation, there was a lot of stuff churning away, Sam realised. He wasn't sure if Dean was ready to talk about it yet.

"What took you so long?" Dean asked, and Sam leaned back in the corner between seat and door with a long exhale.

"Aside from trying to figure out the passwords and secrets of the place, you mean?" he asked sardonically. "It took me a while to find the right circle – the room it was in had dozens."

His brother made a noise in his throat that might've been an acknowledgement, and Sam studied the stony profile to his left. There was a vibe coming off Dean, a low-grade hum of some sort of emotion that he was trying to keep from showing. Whatever was bugging his brother, he didn't want to talk about it in front of Ellie, Sam thought.

That, in itself, set off a small alarm. There wasn't much Dean hadn't talked over with her, not that Sam knew of, anyway. She was the only one he'd told about Hell in any detail. His brother had let that slip out one night, not long after she'd taken off to keep from leading any more angels to them. It'd come out reluctantly, and with the help of a fifth of cheap whiskey, but he could still remember the shock he'd felt at the time – in part from the fact Dean had told someone else, instead of him – and in part from the realisation that what lay between the two of them was significantly more complicated than he'd imagined.

It should've been something he remembered, later on when he'd extracted the promise from his brother to go and live a normal life. But, by the time things had rolled around to his decision to take Lucifer back to the cage himself, Dean had given every appearance of having convinced himself that Ellie was gone and wouldn't be back. Something his brother was good at, he thought, recalling the aftermath of Lisa and Ben's kidnapping. Convincing himself that he didn't deserve anything, that having any kind of dream wasn't for him.

 _Don't get mad at me – don't you do that. It was my job!_

In his memory of that moment, Dean's eyes had been wide and suspiciously shiny in the moonlight, his voice thick. At the time, he'd been struggling with the shock of realisation that his brother had not only done what their father had done, never thinking of the cost he'd felt about that, not only given up his life for him, never imagining the burden that'd been dumped on him, but had made a sacrifice for eternity, not death but eternal damnation, simply so he could live.

He'd known in that instant that Dean had made the deal without thinking what it really meant, what would really happen to him, or to the little brother he was going to be leaving behind, wracked and riddled with more guilt than he could stand. It'd been born of his brother's love, but the cost had been too high, too unbearable and his own sacrifice still hadn't settled the reverberations of that moment in his soul.

Over the weeks and months that'd followed, endlessly and frantically searching for a solution, a way out, he'd seen Dean as he'd never seen his brother before. It hadn't taken that long before Dean'd realised what'd been coming for him, and he'd watched in horror as he'd attempted to shrug that knowledge off, to accept it somehow as if he'd deserved it. After they'd freed Bobby from the dream-attacks, his brother'd admitted that he was scared – hell, terrified – and that he wanted to find a way to get free of the deal. But when Ellie's plan had failed, he'd lost the little hope he'd had … and Sam still wasn't sure how much of the despair that'd followed her disappearance had been from the loss of a way to kill Lilith and void his deal – and how much had been in his belief that she'd died trying to save him.

He'd seen his older brother's hope vanish again when Raphael had come for them. Lucifer out, losing Ellen and Jo in the attempt to kill the archangel, being dragged to Heaven and finding out that Adam had been pulled from his peace by Michael, none of it had been fun stuff, and Dean had been going through the motions with a bottle under his bed and less than four hours of sleep a night, barely managing to pretend he cared about any of it.

" _Why don't we see if we can find Ellie? Bobby said she was–"_ he'd tried to raise the subject, just before they'd run into the Whore of Babylon.

" _She left. She's gone! Alright?!" Dean'd snarled back, turning away and stalking across the cheap room to his bed, the duffel sitting on it and the bottle that was lying inside. "She didn't wa–she's not coming back. Just drop it!"_

But that hadn't been the worst of it.

When he'd found himself back on this plane, alone, and curiously uncaring about that fact, he'd gone to Cicero, watching his brother with Lisa and Ben through a lighted window, glad – for reasons he now knew were more related to not wanting to be tied down to anyone else – that Dean had his chance at what he'd wanted for a long, long time. He'd gone from Indiana to South Dakota, not sure if it was a good idea, but unable to resist seeing Bobby and letting him know. He'd been surprised to find the old man drinking and angry.

" _What's the big deal? Dean's got his life, he's happy_ ," he'd said to the hunter, and Bobby'd scowled at his glass.

" _You weren't here, Sam, you didn't – didn't have to watch his heart break a bit more every damned day when Ellie didn't show."_

" _I thought he'd given up on that?"_

" _So did I, until I had to sit here and watch him waiting for her, telling himself she'd turn up sooner or later, waiting for Cas to find her, his grief over losing you getting worse by the day and no way he could deal with it," Bobby'd told him. It could've been the liquor that'd loosened the old man's lips. It could've been the pain. Sam'd recognised – on an intellectual level, if not an emotional one – just how much Bobby cared for Dean, right at that moment. "Damn, but I hated her for that, not coming to put him out of his misery, at least. "_

It hadn't been Ellie's idea or fault. They'd both found that out, much later, but that hadn't changed Bobby's ire at the time, or the vivid images he'd given Sam of his older brother's despair and anguish.

When he'd realised Dean'd gone to Cicero without anything of the things he'd wanted, trying to keep a promise he'd made to a brother he'd believed dead – worse than dead, damned for all eternity – he'd wondered if he should go back and face him. Put at least one thing to rest, give him some relief from his pain and sorrow. In the end, soulless and emotionless and acting on what'd been more right for him than for Dean, he'd decided against it. The man he'd seen, sitting at the dining table in the little house, had been smiling at Ben, eating a home-cooked meal and looking alright. He'd thought it was best to leave well enough alone.

Closing his eyes and letting out his breath, Sam realised that a lot of his thoughts and decisions throughout that time had been like that. Hunting had kept him tied to life, his thoughts absent of feeling, focussed on the purely practical, the purely physical. He'd had more sex in that time than before or since, he thought, his mouth turning down wryly with the admission. For no other reason than he hadn't cared, hadn't wanted a connection, just a release, and that was exactly what he'd got. Again, at the time, he'd thought he'd become more like his brother, without those feelings. He'd found out later on that that hadn't been the truth either. Dean's hookups had been about release, but they'd never been without caring. It had been a minor revelation that had surprised him, yet again, about his brother and all the things he'd kept inside, trying never to show.

Twisting around a little more in the seat, he looked into the back. Despite the fact that Ellie seemed to be relaxed and breathing slowly and steadily, giving the appearance of sleeping soundly, he had the feeling she wasn't.

It wasn't just the fact she'd told Dean to go, to get him out of the firing line, he thought. Something else had happened – or a lot of something elses – and it was keeping the two of them distant from each other.

There wasn't much he could offer to either of them.

* * *

 _ **Whitefish, Montana**_

The shower was running and Dean stood just outside the bathroom door, wondering why he was hesitating, shifting from foot to foot with indecision.

Fuck it, he thought abruptly, pulling off his shirt and tee shirt, leaning against the doorframe to yank off his boots and socks, fingers fumbling in his haste to unbuckle his belt and get his jeans off. If she felt differently … if she wasn't interested … at least he'd know for sure, he thought, pushing the door open and walking in.

The screen was fogged and he could barely make her out through it. Pulling it aside, he stepped into the square cubicle and shut it behind him, his eyes never leaving the woman standing under the spray of water, skin creamy and clean, long hair darkened from its normal copper to a deep mahogany.

"Hey," he said, clearing his throat when the word felt like it caught.

Ellie opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Hey, I would've left you some hot."

"Couldn't wait," he told her, relief at the warmth in her eyes abruptly filling him and dissolving his doubts. "Thought I could help – with – uh – you know, those – uh – hard to get to – places."

"Such a gentleman," she said, looking him over assessingly with a one-sided smile. "Though, to be fair, we should probably start with getting you cleaner?"

She brought soapy hands up to his chest, rubbing them slowly up his neck and over his shoulders, and the feel of them sent a tremor through him, his head tipping back a little at the sensations that were building right through his body.

"If you – uh – insist," he managed to get out, eyes shutting in pleasure.

He heard her low laugh as she manoeuvred him around to stand under the flow, the beat of the hot water competing with her touch, gliding over his skin in a lather of sweet-smelling bubbles.

There were aches and stings and pains, patches of raw skin and bruises that were starting now to colour up. None of those things detracted from the slow and gentle movement of her hands, or the act itself, ridding him of the dirt and blood that'd felt like a second skin on the drive back.

"Lean down," she told him, filling her palm with a squirt of shampoo that scented the room fragrantly, bringing to mind summer fields and sunshine.

He stretched his arms to either side, bracing himself against the tiles and complying, more knots in his psyche unravelling with the unexpected sensuality of having someone else wash his hair, her fingers massaging, soft yet firm; her breasts, full and round and running with water, right in front of him. _Could so get used to this_ , he thought, with a long, tension-shedding exhale.

The experiences in his life of someone taking care of him were very limited. He was more than a little astonished to realise it added a strange new level to the arousal that was still building – slowed down, softened, gentled, somehow – but very much still there. It made what was between them more intimate, in some subtle way he couldn't quite figure out.

"Turn around," she said and he straightened slowly, looking down at her for a long moment, then turning. Over his shoulders, down the length of his back, her hands caressed him, soapy and soft, and he ducked his head into the spray, eyes and mouth closing tightly as much to hold in an abrupt surge of emotion as to keep the water out.

She worked her way around him, frissons of pleasure with each smooth touch flickering along his skin and fluttering the muscle beneath. Stroking down his stomach and over his hips, her touch lightened as she pushed closer to him and reached down. The arousal that'd been lurking under the comforting feeling of being taken care of leapt up, forcing a rumbling groan out of him, his hands closing into fists to keep himself still.

"Christ – Ellie."

He doubted he was going to make it to the main event at this rate, her thorough attention dragging deeper and deeper bursts of sensation through his nerves, heightened and intensified by the feel of her body, pressed hard against him, and he was already way too close to the line.

"Uh, wait – huh – just–" he stuttered, turning and bending his head.

Her arms slid around him, lips meeting in a kiss that seared through him with its undisguised need, stripping away all the doubts he'd had, dissolving all his arguments. Reaching down, his hands slipped down her back and over the smooth curve of her ass, pulling her closer as he lifted her up and braced her against the tiled wall, the kiss going on and on, igniting his nerves and burning through his blood.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was vaguely aware he was babbling, to something or someone, making promises, making deals, swearing he'd let everything go, that he'd keep fighting, that he'd give anything at all, if he could just keep this, just have this, until the day he died.

* * *

 _ **Next morning**_

Ellie jerked into wakefulness, her heart pounding, a sharp pain in her hands. She looked down, seeing the crescent marks in her palm darkening as blood filled them, and relaxing her fingers. She'd been driving her nails in, in the dream, she thought, disoriented by the not-real memory.

She blinked at the soft light that filled the bedroom, slowly registering the feel of the man's body against her back, his arms curving more closely around her as he muttered against her neck.

"S'up?"

"Nothing," she said, wincing a little at the almost-lie. It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't something she could tell him about right now either. "Just a dream."

She felt his lips on her neck. "About what?" he asked, his voice sounding a little more awake.

"Falling, I think," she said, looking at the opposite wall. That _was_ a lie, but it couldn't be helped. Her past was coming back in bite-sized subconscious and conscious chunks and she needed to see all of it before she could figure out how to tell anyone else.

"Hate those," he murmured, still mostly asleep, she thought, and thinking of other things judging by the way his hands were slowly wandering.

"Mmm."

Rolling over, she stretched up, aiding and abetting his distraction into something that was easier – and more pleasurable for both of them – to deal with.

It wasn't till after, lying alone in the tangle of sheets and listening absently to the off-key singing, muffled by the sound of the shower, through the half-open door, that she realised she was not looking at what she needed to do.

The past had a way of sneaking up and ambushing when least expected. It was something she'd known for a long time, on a theoretical level, at least. The things she hadn't known, all those things she'd managed to tell herself were different, that her childhood had been normal, up till the night her parents were killed … they were pressing against her, demanding to be seen and heard and she couldn't do that while she was here. Wouldn't do it, she admitted unwillingly to herself. She loved him and needed him and trusted him … But.

" _So." Fionnuala had looked at her, one fine brow raised in a question. "When do we get to meet him?"_

She'd been in San Francisco to see Hiroko about the rumoured existence of an ancient spirit board, his contacts within the black market significantly better than hers, and she'd dropped by the bookstore to kill some time while she was waiting for his response.

" _Who?" she'd tried to prevaricate, knowing it was a waste of time. There were a few people who knew her well, people she'd cared about and trusted for years. Fionnuala and Iain, her new husband but childhood sweetheart, and the rest of the Macdonald clan, had known her the longest._

" _The man who's made you all lit up inside," Fionnuala said, dropping gracefully onto the sofa. "Come on, tell me all about him. When can I expect an invitation to your upcoming nuptials? I mean, that's only fair since you missed mine."_

 _The thought of it, with accompanying involuntary images, had sent her iced tea down the wrong pipes and she'd spent the next few minutes trying to get it back out._

 _They were hunters. That wasn't on the cards. Not for her. Not for him._

" _Don't hold your breath waiting for that," she'd croaked at Fionnuala, when she'd been able to speak again._

" _Why not? Ellie, it's as clear as day you're in love."_

Had it been, she wondered? Her life had changed, the moment she'd recognised in herself. And again, in the split second she'd seen he'd felt … something. Something more than he was willing to admit. She felt at peace more often. Felt more herself when she was with him, and even when she wasn't, in some not-easily-explained way. It was an incredible gift, what he'd given her … himself, as much as he could, and she knew he was trying harder than he'd ever done in his life to give her more _._

" _It's – that's not the way it is," she'd told Katherine's daughter, shaking her head. She couldn't explain all complications._

Driving out of San Francisco, heading back east, she'd thought about that conversation for a long time, her mind throwing up scenarios, memories, logical and illogical arguments and rejecting all of them.

Maybe that'd had something to do with the way she hadn't been facing herself, she thought, rolling onto her side and getting out of the bed. That as committed as she was, it was still a commitment that was lacking because of the holes she'd felt, in herself.

Or, she considered, pulling on jeans and a tee shirt, picking up a brush and running it through her hair, maybe it'd been a deeper understanding. Something she'd seen or known about Dean she hadn't acknowledged, but couldn't avoid being certain about.

It didn't matter. Here and now was the time they had. And she gave him all she could of herself, but like him, kept some things back.

The shower stopped, along with the singing, and she turned to the small mirror over the bureau, fingers nimbly braiding her hair back into its usual single plait, her gaze watching the door behind her.

He came out a moment later, towel slung around his hips and hair spiking in all directions, still wet, his gaze stopping on her and a grin making his eyes lighter.

"You might, uh, have to wait a while, for the hot –"

Turning around, she walked fast across the room, putting her arms around him, rising onto her toes and kissing him. His response was instant and heartfelt.

"What was that for?" he asked, when they came up for air.

"Nothing in particular," she said, letting him go. Not nothing, she thought, but nothing she could explain, she added silently.

For most of her life, she'd been used to problem-solving alone. Dealing with things on her own. She was going to need some time – time with no other distractions – to work it all out.


	7. Chapter 7 Memory

**Chapter 7 Memory**

* * *

 _ **Whitefish, Montana**_

"He's not answering," Dean said, throwing his cell onto the sofa in disgust.

"Who?" Sam looked up from the laptop's screen, brow wrinkling up as the phone bounced on the cushion next to him.

"Eddie Murphy," Dean growled, swinging around to pace past him. "Frank!"

"Give him some time."

"It's been weeks!"

"Twelve days," Sam corrected.

"That's–that's nearly two weeks!"

" _Nearly_ ," Sam repeated, leaning back on the sofa. "C'mon, Dean, five-digit number, there're a lot of possibilities."

At the other end of the room, Ellie was sitting at the kitchen table, her phone against her ear, one hand writing fast as she listened to the hunter talking on the other end of the line.

Dean ignored his brother's comment and looked over at her.

Showered, hair clean and back in its habitual long braid, the cuts and bruising patterning her face stood out vividly against creamy skin. His face and arms were no better, but he'd barely noticed his injuries and he couldn't seem to remove his gaze from hers.

 _In the life._

"What do you want to do?"

Sam's question drifted over him, heard distantly and without impact. Over the top of it, he heard another voice, from the past, a droning voice with a slightly nasal lisp.

 _It is hard to contend against one's heart's desire; for whatever it wishes to have, it buys at the cost of soul._

The thought, whole and intact, swam up from buried memories and he blinked at it, staring at Ellie, feeling a rushing sensation as the past seemed to flood into his mind – a school room in some no-name town, some unknown number of years ago.

Turning away, Dean frowned as the memory got a bit clearer. The teacher's name had been … Attison. A loser dude who'd worn a baby-crap brown three piece suit, summer and winter, had glasses and a prominent Adam's apple, that'd bobbed up and down in his neck like a turkey's when he'd gotten excited about something. They'd been there nearly four months. His father'd had a broken ankle and had been like a bear with a sore head.

"Dean?"

 _He'd been half-asleep in class, idly checking out the length and curve of Annie Riley's thigh where her skirt had been rucked up by her continuous squirming in her seat, Attison's voice droning in the background, the room still and hot._

' _Heraclitus,' Attison'd boomed out at the class, making him jerk upright in his seat. 'He believed in the constancy of change; that permanence was merely an illusion – or even a delusion; that opposites and cycles of opposition were the driving force behind everything.'_

"Dean!"

"What?!" He turned around to look at his brother, the memory fragmenting.

"Where the hell are you, man?" Sam asked, waving a hand over the low table he was sitting next to, its surface taken over by the laptop and piles of books, as if it explained both his annoyance and their reason for being there. "What do you want to do about Frank?"

 _Buys at the cost of the soul –_

Scowling slightly, Dean shrugged, pushing the thought away and covering whatever expression was on his face with a rough swipe over his jawline.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Go see him? See if we're getting our money's worth?"

"I don't think pushing him is gonna get us a whole lot further," Sam said.

They both turned as Ellie closed her cell with a snap and swivelled around in her chair. "Good news and bad news," she said, getting up.

"Good news," Dean demanded, heading for the cabin's antiquated refrigerator.

"Roman's definitely looking for an artefact," she told them over her shoulder, walking to the counter to refill her coffee cup. "He's got ten teams, digging from northern Turkey, all through the Middle East, to the border between eastern Iran and China."

"Looking for what?" Sam asked.

"He hasn't specified that to the people working for him," she said, setting her cup onto the table and giving him a shrug. "He's given possible sites, but told the archaeologists in charge that he wants all the remains examined by his own teams, if and when they find something."

"So," Dean said slowly. "He knows what it is. Just doesn't want to say."

"Mmm-hmm."

"And the bad news?" Sam picked up his empty cup, shook his head at the beer Dean was proffering and went for the coffee.

"The bad news is that some angel told Methuselah about the Levis, back before the Flood and all the rest of the upheavals," she said, rubbing her fingertip over the small crease between her brows. "The information in the heretical section of the Vatican library, under lock and key."

She pushed her notepad toward Dean, and he leaned over to look at her neat, backward slanting notes, glancing back at her and lifting a brow.

"Summed up?"

"They were here before anything crawled out of the sea, and for a few million years, they were severely restricted in reproduction," she said, dragging the pad back. "Then, sometime toward the end of the Cretaceous period, there was a double-whammy–a lot of volcanic activity, lasting anywhere from five hundred to seven hundred and fifty million years, and sometime in the middle, a meteorite or asteroid hit the planet in Mexico and changed the climate–"

"That wiped out the dinosaurs–" He lifted a brow at her. "I saw _Jurassic Park_."

Ellie shrugged. "The impact was one thing – it changed the planet's climate to a much cooler one, but it was more than likely accompanied by radiation and a change in the chemistry of the earth's atmosphere, and between them, they jump-started evolution of most species in a very accelerated way, even though it killed off other species."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Lemme guess, the bigmouths got the booster, not the flick."

"Right," she said. "Reproduction went completely haywire and they were locked up."

"Why'm I hearing a 'but' here?"

"Probably because there is one," she remarked, tapping a nail against the page. "It wasn't just the climate change or radiation booster that enabled the changes to their increase in numbers, the angel told Methuselah. They had some help."

"From?"

"Lucifer, it seemed."

Dean blinked at her. "Lucy-in-the- _Cage_ -Lucifer?"

"Yeah, that one."

"How?" Sam asked. "People weren't even around then."

"No, and he wasn't in Hell," Ellie agreed readily. "There was no Hell, as it is now, back then. But this angel told Noah's father that Lucifer had been fiddling with the planet for some time, and he – uh – seems to have made a mistake in some of his experiments."

Dean's exhale gusted out with impatience. "You're sayin' that Lucifer fucked up a science project and that's how the levis got outta hand?"

"More or less," she said, mouth tucking in at one corner at his paraphrasing.

"How is it that his dad didn't kill him for that one?" Dean muttered, turning away. "I'm guessin' this hasn't got a happy ending?"

"Well, according to the history the angel gave them, Lucifer thought he'd be able to keep it under wraps because he made it a ritual. They couldn't reproduce without the ritual, and they needed a few key elements."

"But that didn't work out?" Sam frowned, leaning forward across the table.

"Not really," Ellie said. "The leader got hold of the bowl the angel'd made and hid it. They started going nuts with being fruitful and all the rest of it, and God swept them up and locked them into Purgatory, leaving the bowl somewhere topside."

"So he's digging up every place he thinks it might've been left?"

"That's about it." Ellie finished her coffee.

"Can we get ahead of them?" Sam watched his brother's scowl deepen.

"It's possible," Ellie said, turning back to look at him. "People in that world aren't exactly thick on the ground and they hear things, tell each other things. We'll probably get a few hours notice, if anyone finds it."

"A few hours–!" Dean swung around.

"A few hours is all we'll need," she told him, hands raised placatingly. "He's a hands-on monster, right? It'll go to wherever he thinks is the safest place."

Sam stood. "The Death Star."

Dean shot him an annoyed look. "Corporate headquarters is in Chicago," he added to Ellie.

"We'll keep an eye on that too."

"With our magic remote tracking devices?" he asked her, his sarcasm right up against his teeth.

"Jericho lives in Chicago, Dean," Ellie explained, drawing in a discreet breath for patience. "He's laid up with injuries at the moment, not so bad he can't do some surveillance. I already called. He's keeping a routine watch on Roman – and," she added, flicking a look at Sam. "The Death Star."

* * *

 _ **Four hours later**_

Ellie stood at the kitchen counter, the knife in her hand flashing up and down as she mindlessly chopped up tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, zucchini and peppers, her thoughts on the information Patrick had given her.

Was it coincidence that Lucifer seemed to have been involved in absolutely everything that could've gone wrong with the world, she wondered absently? No. Not coincidence.

 _Fallen angel, bright as the sun, with heart and mind as black as the space between the stars. No soul, but essence of energy, power beyond imagining wielded by the whims of a child._

She didn't know where the quote had come from, but the accounts of the Morning Star were pretty universal on one thing – Lucifer had been a brat, petulant and impatient, his great beauty and warrior's skills wasted on a mental state that had been spoiled for too long.

On the stove next to her, the deep cast-iron skillet was heating, the oil thinning, and she swept the garlic and onions into it, watching it for a moment to make sure it was sizzling without burning. Next to the pile of vegetables, the bowl holding a pound of ground beef went into the skillet next, and she stirred it quickly, turning it until it was a uniform brown.

Dean and Sam sat on opposite sides of the small table, their faces lit up by laptop screens, expressions intent on what they were reading. Background, she knew, because that was all they had to look at right at this moment. On the digs scattered across the desert. On the apocryphal documents Patrick had scanned and sent. She added the vegetables to the skillet and poured a glass of red wine into the mix, turning to fill a saucepan full of water.

The harsh buzz of a cell phone brought both men's heads up, Dean looking around. "Not mine."

"Not mine either," Sam said, turning to Ellie. She shook her head.

The buzzing continued and they got up, moving to either side of the low table and shifting the piles of books and notes. The phone vibrated across the scarred wooden surface and Dean looked at it as if it were a snake, turning away and returning to the table. Sam frowned and reached down to pick it up.

"Hello?" he said, the frown deepening as Dean turned abruptly away. "Uh … no, he's–uh–he's not here. Maybe I can–?" He paused. "Well, I'm–uh–a friend–"

Ellie looked up from the stove as Sam stopping speaking. "Hang up?"

"Sounded like a kid." Sam nodded, his expression distracted.

Dean snorted. "For Bobby?"

Walking back to his seat, Sam shook his head. "Maybe–I don't know–a hunter's kid? She said her dad'd told her to call Bobby Singer specifically."

Ellie watched as Dean's expression closed up, his gaze dropping back to the laptop's screen.

"Her dad'll left her another number," he said, his voice low and a little thick.

Sam opened his mouth to argue as he dropped into the chair, closing it again when he saw the rigidity in his brother's shoulders. "That what Dad did for us?"

"Yeah," Dean said, his tone suggesting that was all he was going to say about it.

The water in the pot was boiling and Ellie took a handful of pasta and dropped it in.

He'd told her, in disjointed bits and pieces, about their childhood. Sam had filled in other details. There'd been times when they'd been left alone, sometimes for days, told to stay put and the responsibility on Dean to make sure Sam went to school, ate his meals, brushed his teeth, got to the bed on time – and was completely protected. He hadn't sounded resentful in those scant retellings, just a little wistful that Sam hadn't gotten as much of a childhood as he had.

Somewhere along the line, in the last couple of years, though, resentment had begun to manifest. Not for the taking care of Sam, she thought, but for the responsibility of keeping him–keeping both of them–safe while John had tracked and hunted down whatever he'd been able to find on the demon who'd stolen all their lives.

 _Jim Murphy, then if I couldn't get hold of him, Bobby or later on, Caleb. There were a couple of others, but Dad pissed them off and by the time Sam left for Stanford, it was really just Jim or Caleb._

They'd been sitting at a bar, waiting for midnight, a ghoul's nest to clean up in Santa Fe, and he'd picked up his beer, downing it in a couple of gulping mouthfuls, his voice a bit thin, his expression strained.

 _One night … he'd been gone a couple of days,_ he'd said, his gaze fixed on the bottom of the empty glass. _I was scared as hell, thinking I'd give him til morning, not sure if I should wait that long. He came in about one, cut up and bloody, broken arm, broken ribs, his back all ripped up …_

Looking up at her, a smile stretching out his mouth with no humour in it, just the echoes of his fear.

 _I tried to patch up him, but I wasn't sure I was doing it right. I called Jim._ He'd shaken his head, tipping it back and dragging a deep breath _. Sonofabitch nearly died in my arms, on the bathroom floor of a roach pit in Kentucky. I was ten and I wanted to hate him then, all the hours I had to wait till Jim got there._

Wanted to hate him but couldn't, Ellie thought, stirring the sauce absentmindedly. Not back then, no matter what the load was, Dean had tried to be a man and carry it, tried to grow up as fast as he could.

Now, watching him stare at the screen, she could almost see the cracks, that'd started opening up when he'd found out how much his father had been keeping from him, and were now widening. Deepening. Old resentments and the realisation of all he'd done, all he'd given up for his love and his loyalty, were pouring out, filling him with a poison just as destructive as keeping them locked away and buried had been.

She needed to talk to him about it, but they were so far from the right place and the right time it was almost laughable. He couldn't listen right now; couldn't see past what was going on right now. At best, he'd hear her out and ignore it. At worst … at worst, she thought he might decide it was easier not to have someone in his life like that. Someone who insisted that he deal.

Flicking her wrist, she caught up a couple of strands of spaghetti in the fork she held, blowing on them and tasting them. They were almost done. A couple more minutes. She looked at the sauce, thickened nicely and releasing a rich scent into the cabin's big main room. Going to the rickety dresser, she pulled out plates, checking on the oven as she passed it. A waft of steam escaped, laden with the enticing scent of garlic bread. Setting the plates and cutlery on the counter kept her hands busy. She turned off the oven and burner under the sauce, her thoughts cycling back to where she'd started.

It wasn't just him, she acknowledged wryly, taking the pot to the sink and draining the pasta. She wasn't in a good frame of mind to deal with anyone right now either. Less than the pretence she'd lived with for years was the shock of having turned away from reality, of having tried to make her past something it wasn't. It was undermining the way she'd seen herself, undermining everything she'd spent the past dozen years building.

Ladling the pasta onto the plates, she looked over at the table. "You ready to eat?"

Dean looked up, blinking as if he was just registering the smell of the food. She saw him swallow and nod, closing the laptop screen with a forceful click. On the other side of the table, Sam turned, drawing in a deep breath and closing his screen. He passed the laptop over to Dean and got to his feet, going to the kitchen.

"Smells good," he said, taking two of the loaded plates.

"Just spaghetti," Ellie told him, picking up the third plate and the cutlery and following him to the table. "Nothing to write home about."

"Anything home-cooked is something to write home about," Sam retorted, setting the dishes down and dropping back into his chair. He leaned over and drew in a deep, appreciative breath. "Anything not served in a greasy paper bag stinking of onions is something to write about," he added.

"Grease is good for you." Dean sat down and reached across for a piece of the garlic bread. "Clogs up your arteries so you don't bleed out so fast."

"You can tell it to the paramedics when they're trying to keep your heart beating after a massive heart attack," Sam snorted, twirling a load of pasta onto his fork.

"Okay," Ellie interceded. "Can we eat?"

"We're eatin'," Dean protested, one cheek bulging with a mouthful of garlic bread.

"I still think we should go check on that girl," Sam added, almost over the top of him.

"Sam, we got our priorities –"

"Which as you told me, over and over, was helping people–"

"You don't even know if she needs help–!"

"Who rings Bobby Singer specifically if they don't?" Sam's brow wrinkled up as he looked at Dean. "This obsession with Dick isn't paying off, Dean, we've got other things we should be doing–"

"Babysitting ain't one of them!"

"We don't know–"

"Sam, how are you going to find this girl?" Ellie cut in, her fork poised over her plate. The two of them had been cooped up in the cabin for too long. They weren't in sync anyway and they'd be at each other's throats if they had to stay here much longer.

"Caller ID," Sam said, turning to look at her. "I can find the address from the number."

She raised a quizzical brow. "From a cell phone at some random motel? You'd have to hack into a telco office to get that, even if you've got the number."

"Right, waste of time," Dean said, his gaze on his plate, but a smug certainty in his voice.

"How'd you find out where we were, when we had to drop all our old numbers?" Sam ignored his brother, mopping up the sauce with the last of the bread.

"I got Franklin to talk me through running an ANI trace from an office I broke into," she told him. "He did the work, I just got into the hardware. I had messages on my phone to give me a matching date and time stamp."

"Fine." Sam frowned. "I'll call Franklin."

"You really think this girl needs help?" Ellie asked.

Glancing at Dean's stony face, Sam nodded. "She sounded scared."

"Franklin's in Hawaii," Ellie said. "Two month sabbatical. Send the number to Ray and let him do the hard yards. You'll have an answer in the morning."

She caught sight of Dean's expression as he got up and took his plate to the sink, sighing as she recognised the feeling behind that curled lip.

He turned around. "Do whatever you wanna do," he said, his gaze flicking to Ellie then back to Sam.

"If you want to get on with a job, I'll take off in the morning," she said, getting to her feet and picking up her plate. She wasn't here to mediate between them, she told herself, ignoring the nervous flip of her stomach.

"I don't want to chase some kid–" Dean started to say, then caught himself, his gaze dropping to the floor. "You get an address, Sam, you could check it out. Me and Ellie'll go see Frank, find out what he's doing."

He lifted his head and looked at her. "Alright?"

She looked back at him. In his eyes, there was a plea; mute but there. A tacit request to stay.

"Alright," she said, walking past him and putting her plate in the sink.

* * *

 _Don't go. I don't want you to go._

He thought it, the words loud in his mind, a little past midnight, in the darkness of the bedroom.

It was the truth, but there was still something unspoken behind it, something he couldn't make come clear. Or, he realised, didn't want to think about. He couldn't shake the feeling she could sense that … thing … between them, too.

Since they'd gotten back from Spokane, he thought he'd been able to feel her, moving away, little by little, even now when he felt her turn against him, her sigh soft against his chest.

This was the one place they couldn't hide things and for the first time, replaying the last hour and a half, he was pretty sure she'd shut herself off from him, not much, not enough to be certain. Keeping something back. He couldn't hold it against her or even ask about it, because for the first time, he'd been doing the same thing, trying hard to find that place they made together, where he could be himself, nothing hidden, but knowing despite the blaze of sensation that'd filled him, that it wasn't the same.

 _Everyone leaves you, Dean, you noticed?_

Over the last few years, that fear had only gotten stronger. Maybe because everyone had.

It was kind of hard not to notice.

Sam'd come back. Then Cas and Bobby. Then Ellie. But losing them all in the first place had done something … irrevocable … something he still couldn't face.

 _You couldn't put me out of my misery!?_

It'd been the first time he'd recognised that the people he cared most about, the ones he'd loved with everything he had, didn't know him. Not well enough to know how it would feel, to him.

It wasn't a fair thought. Sam'd been soulless. Ellie'd come and seen him playing house and had thought he was where he wanted to be, he'd told her as much and at that time he'd never said to her – with you. I want it with you.

Bobby'd known the truth, known how he'd felt, known how Ellie'd felt, but had figured he was safe and settled and that was all that he needed.

Looking back, he wondered what would've happened if they'd been in his life, at the end of a phone, or dropping by from time to time. Would it've changed anything? He didn't think so. He'd seen Ellie, in a grainy news photo on the other side of the world, and he hadn't left.

 _I want Dean to have a home_.

He'd wanted a home. Some place that didn't smell of the last transient guest. Some place he could relax. Some place where he didn't have to guard every look and every thought and every feeling. It hadn't been like that with Lisa. Hadn't been like that anywhere, with anyone. Until now.

For the last few days, despite everything going on, he'd gotten a glimpse of what having a home might feel like. The day after they'd gotten back, they'd pulled the weapons from the bags and cleaned them, not speaking of the levis or the elemental, or any of the other millions of problems waiting for them, just around the corner. It'd been shooting the breeze, reminiscing a bit about cases, discussing tactics, talking about people they knew, the three of them sitting there together, even his little brother holding up his end and coming up with crap he'd barely remembered, making her laugh. Making him laugh.

The cabin'd been filled with the old familiar scents and he'd felt his tension just bleed out of him, arguing amiably with his brother over some old memory … and it was all like that, in some way he couldn't quite work out … going to sleep wasn't something he dreaded anymore. His dreams, if he dreamed at all, were mild, sometimes pleasant memories, sometimes wishful thinking; it didn't matter because when he opened his eyes in the morning, squinting against the clear light, he felt rested, not chewed out … and at any time, he could look around and she was there, doing whatever she was doing, stopping, looking back at him as if she could feel him looking at her … in her eyes, he saw the man he'd wanted to be, believed in that man, for the most part, because she believed in him.

 _Then why the_ fuck _don't you believe it_ , he asked himself in frustration? _Why do you keep thinking it's all gonna fall apart?_

The question was the answer, she sometimes said. He knew he was looking for the cracks 'cause it'd fallen apart before. He wasn't all that sure he wanted to face that again.

* * *

 _ **I-92E**_

"So he – what? Subsumed the personalities of the people he was possessing?" Ellie asked, twisting around in the seat to look at him, her journal open and on her knees, a pen hovering over the page.

"I don't think so," Dean said, staring through the windshield. "It was, uh, more like he took over the driver's seat but wasn't controlling where he were going."

"Strong emotion is a pretty potent lure for any kind of spirit energy," Ellie pointed out.

He glanced across at her. "This wasn't like a poltergeist or any other kind that feeds off energy–more like it was generating the emotion to get something it needed."

"How often have you seen that?"

"Twice," he said. "Had no idea what it was, the first time."

The asylum had been filled with ghosts, he remembered. All of them had been stuck there thanks to the unfinished business they'd had with the man they'd killed. He still sometimes had nightmares where that sound, that empty click, was all he could hear. His brother's eyes, narrow and bright with hatred, all he could see.

"Aetheric revenants draw out the energy of any living thing within their field of influence?"

"Not that either," Dean said, shaking his head, trying to shake off the past. "We've handled them before."

More memories crowded against him. The way the girl'd looked, in the little house down by the Gulf, her eyes too big for her face. At first, they'd thought they'd been dealing with another shtriga, but it wasn't. Sam'd gone full parapsychological geek on that case, and they'd seen it at work, cameras all over the house and every kind of generated field meter registering the movements, the fluctuating energy fields, taking digital and film stills and movies … and they'd finally figured on what they'd been dealing with. The second time had been in Seattle. Four college students had died from that ghost, living in the cheap student accommodation they'd thought was such a bargain, every bit of energy sucked out of them.

Glancing sideways at her, he shrugged. "They all die the same way, y'know. Salt and burn the remains and it's done."

"Mmm."

"What do you want to do with all this info?"

He felt her look at him, the pen's scratching stopping.

"I'm not entirely sure," she said, and he heard a strange note in her voice, gone a moment later. "There's so much, you know? I keep thinking, if I could get more together, could get it into something that we could search, that we could use … spend less time spent on trying to work out what we're dealing with and more time on actually getting rid of them–"

He frowned at the road. "We've got Jim's journals–Rufus', Bobby's, Dad's, some of Ellen's–"

From the corner of his eye, he saw her nod.

"I know, and I've been copying them, transcribing them, but they're like–a–a tip of an iceberg, Dean," Ellie said, the end of her pen tapping hard against the page under it. "I've storage units full of books–I know Bobby had as well–your grandfather had a library–I've never had a chance to go there and dig it out–I–"

"Okay," he said, turning to look at her. "Okay, I get it. But you know that stuff is probably a lot safer where it is than wherever we could put it?"

"I need a new base," she agreed, nodding. "Someplace I can really protect."

His knuckles tightened slightly on the wheel, his heart giving a weird little double-beat at the words. For Ellie, this was the life, her life. He didn't think she was thinking about giving it up, not for normal. Maybe not even for him. As much as he'd found a feeling of home when she was around, as much as he could see answers, see how things might just be able to work when she was there, he knew he was also going to be looking at lifetime of worrying about what might happen, what could happen. What, given his track record so far, had pretty damned good odds of happening.

* * *

 _ **Tappen, North Dakota**_

Almost twelve hours later, Ellie lay on the bed, listening to the noises in the bathroom through the partly open door. Dean was in the shower, disjointedly singing every third or fourth chorus of the song playing in his head.

Rolling onto her stomach, she stared at the clock on the nightstand. She had a feeling Dean had gotten a look at the grief lying in wait for him, while they'd been trapped in the cave. Enough of a look that he didn't want to let any more in or out. He was thinking if he could keep on the move – drive fast enough in any direction – he could outrun it, for a while at least. He knew it couldn't work like that, but it wasn't going to stop him from trying.

The shower stopped, the screen rattling aside.

Kicking the covers back a little, Ellie closed her eyes. She needed time. Her past was pushing and shoving at her, demanding that she look at it. Accept it, she thought, stop pretending it wasn't hers.

Going through the two things together, with no other distractions, might have worked well for both of them, but that wasn't possible. It was, she realised with a sour sigh, unlikely to ever be possible. He couldn't look away, and she never had, and maybe the world needed saving too often for its own good, but it was what it was and there was no percentage in wishing for different now.

With the sound of the door opening, banging a bit on the wall behind it, Ellie opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder as Dean walked out, his towel slung insouciantly around his hips, his hair spiking wetly in every direction.

As he pulled the towel off, she was somewhat amused to find her careful perusal of his body was more professional than amorous, her gaze purposeful as she studied the cloudy healing bruises on his arms and shoulders, the scabbed-over small cuts that seemed to criss-cross his face, neck and chest.

"Checking me out?" he said, his grin widening as he sat on the bed beside her.

"Everything looks like it's healing fast," she told him, repressing a smile.

"Huh." He propped himself on one elbow, reaching out for her hip. "Admit it, you were ogling me."

She dropped her face into the pillow with a snort. "Damn, you caught me out," her reply came out muffled.

"S'only fair," he told her, pulling her over to lie back against him, his mouth on her neck sending a crackle along her nerves. "I ogle you all the time."

He leaned over her, his mouth covering hers before she could say anything else, and the kiss, starting slowly, his lips moving feather-light over hers, lit her up inside and wiped out the worries and plans and thoughts.

Touch deepened, wrapped around with emotions that were still too turgid, too immediate and demanding. Ellie's arms slid around him as his tightened abruptly around her, both feeling that never-admitted need geysering up, masquerading as arousal and igniting them as readily as if it was, but underlaid with all the things they hadn't said.

He lifted his mouth, ducking his head to taste the long line of her neck.

Stretching out, she said, "Do you want to see Frank–"

"No." Dean's head came up to look at her, his eyes dark under the shadow of his brow, just a hint of anger in them. "No Frank. No levis. No jobs. Not here."

The sharpness dropped from his voice as he added, "This – with you – this is the only place I can get away from that crap, get out of my head." He looked away, but his fingers closed a little more tightly around her ribs, his voice thickening slightly. "I – I gotta have someplace where it's … no past. No future. Just right now. Here. I can't do this with anyone but you."

She nodded, stroking her hand up the back of his neck, the admission filling her throat. At some level, she thought, she'd known it. Known it without knowing she had. One of the unsaid things. One of the things she hadn't thought he'd be able to say.

Her fingertips slid over his cheek and jaw, drawing him back. The kiss was urgent this time, both apology and acknowledgement and an admission of her own. She thought that somehow he knew all of that, had felt it, could feel it, because he pulled her closer, until their bodies were pressed tightly together, skin to skin all along their lengths.

* * *

Sometimes it was like swimming in a warm, calm sea; swallowed and caressed and filled with a peace she'd never imagined could be possible. At other times, it felt more like body-surfing the wildest rapids; full of frenetic and jarring cacophony, of sensation, of feeling, scrambling together to reach the peak. It was never the same and it was never predictable, and he knew her better than anyone, but still didn't know all the things inside of her, all the shadows and crevasses and the parts she barely knew herself.

His groan rumbled in his chest, reverberating through her ribs as it gusted out over the skin of her neck, his body shuddering against hers. She arched backward, driving upwards, needing to get closer, to find a deeper connection, feeling that need reciprocated as his darkened eyes met hers for a second and it burned between them, swamped and swept away when he moved or she moved, nerve reaction taking her breath and body in the same pulsing explosion.

Under the curve of her back, his arm pulled her closer and she breathed his scent, hers, theirs together, the second detonation shaking through her with his, so close that the air itself seemed visible, light streaming from somewhere, filling her eyes with him.

* * *

The aftershocks twitched his skin and muscles, winding down slowly. He rested on one side, one arm still curled beneath her neck; the other wrapped possessively around her hip, eyes closed, mouth still open, sucking in deep breaths. His heart's pounding was finally slowing, the thump against the inside of his ribcage easing its violence.

He felt heavy and loose and empty; warm and comfortable and swathed in a contentment he'd come close to, years ago, but hadn't quite reached, back then.

 _This we were good at. It's all the other stuff … not so much._

The memory – her voice, her touch, where they'd been and what they'd just done – no longer stirred him and he smiled at that. The older memories didn't hurt any more and that was better.

 _The only time I get to see the real you is here!_ She'd yelled at him, thumping her fist on the bed. _You make love to me like I'm the only woman you could ever love, but the second your feet hit the floor, all that's gone!_

Sighing a little, Dean shifted his position, feeling Ellie inch closer.

Cassie'd been right. She'd accused him of only wanting intimacy when they were in bed, and he'd thought about that. Not straight after. A while later.

It was – it'd been – the only place he could let down the walls and reach out to someone, and even then, he'd known it was a kind of lie, 'cause if they'd called him on it, he'd've denied it, given some line about making sure everyone was satisfied, no unhappy customers – whatever came into his head to head off that kind of discussion. It hadn't worked so well with Cassie, and it'd taken seeing her again to realise he'd wanted more only because when Sam'd gone off to Stanford, it'd left a hole and he hadn't known how to fill it.

The job hadn't. His father hadn't. He'd been working his ass off and the emptiness was still there. His father hadn't needed protecting and it'd taken him a long, long time to get that he needed someone to protect. Someone to watch over.

He'd had the feeling back when Cassie'd called. Emotion he'd forgotten about had come back, not just with seeing her again, not just with the memories of being with her, but in seeing her like – vulnerable, defenceless – needing him. Afterwards, when the truck and its welded-on vengeful spirit had been destroyed, he'd kept trying to tell himself that the emotion was just as strong. He'd gotten into the car with Sam and closed his eyes and he'd known it wasn't. Had known that in spite of what he'd just told her, he wouldn't be back to see her again.

It'd been the same with Lisa and Ben, he admitted to himself, more Ben than Lise, since the boy'd needed him, had put all his hopes into having a father. He'd wanted to be that father, even when his doubts about how he was handling things crowded up against him. It wasn't enough. Not for him, not for Ben, and nowhere near enough for Lisa. If he'd had that clear in his head when he'd promised Sam, maybe he'd've saved them all a shitload of unnecessary heartache.

… _whatever it wishes to have, it buys at the cost of soul…_

He'd given up his life and soul for his heart's desire, to make sure that his job was done and his brother lived, that he wasn't facing a lifetime of seeing himself as a failure. That hadn't worked out too good for anyone either.

Turning his head to look down at the woman curled against him, he wondered if he was still looking for someone to protect. She didn't need his protection. Didn't need him to look out for her, give up his life or soul for her; didn't want him to sacrifice his dreams. She'd fought and bled to try to save him; had walked away to protect him, and Sam; had stayed away when she'd thought he'd wanted something different, a normal life, his own family. He didn't really have any doubts that she would do it again, if she thought he wanted something else. If something convinced her that he wanted something else.

He changed position slightly, feeling her adjust to the shift automatically, the rise and fall of her ribs steady under his arm, and brows knitting together as he realised he wasn't sure if he knew what he wanted or what he could offer her.

* * *

 _ **Redford, Minnesota.**_

The battered and unkempt-looking house sat alone on its lot, the nearest neighbour almost a mile back. Dean stopped at the beginning of the driveway, and gave Ellie a half-shrug.

"He's nuts," he said, waving a hand toward the building.

Ellie smiled. "Sometimes, that's what it takes."

Making a vague noise in his throat to indicate disagreement, he got out of the car, and pulled out his gun, checking the mag and pushing it back in, glancing at Ellie as she did the same with her Sig on the other side of the car.

"He's paranoid, so don't give him a reason to put a bullet in you," he told her, heading up the slope.

She nodded, following him, her gaze moving over the house, then around the yard.

The front door was locked and Dean gave up the idea of knocking, walking back down the porch stairs and gesturing to the back, his stomach sinking a little as he wondered if coming here was such a great idea.

The back door was open, leading into some kind of storage area. Metal shelving and computer racks took up about half the floor space and lined the walls. Some of it looked like junk, Dean thought, picking his way around a couple of free-standing shelves packed with black hardware from top to bottom. Some of it had lights showing, a steady red or blinking green.

"That's far enough."

He stopped, the Colt snapping up as he caught sight of Frank. Gimlet-eyed, a week's worth of grizzled beard and clothes that looked like they'd been in slept in for a month, the computer genius stepped out from behind a rack of servers, holding a double-barrelled shotgun, the round ends aimed directly at him.

"Take it easy, Frank."

"Take it easy, he says," Frank muttered, his gaze flicking past Dean to Ellie and back. "Go find out about Dick Roman, he tells me. Then I'm burned outta every IP I ever so much as looked at, black ice eating through my security, mooks on every fucking corner –"

He cocked the shotgun, lips drawing back from his teeth in a humourless smile. "An' he sez, take it easy!"

"How you doing, Frank?" Ellie asked, moving to one side of Frank.

"How'm I doin', she asks?!"

"You know him?" Dean turned to look at Ellie.

"We've met, right, Frank?"

"Baton Rouge, 2005. You said it was hoodoo, I told you it was revenants, and who was right then, eh?" Frank rattled off at her, eyes narrowing. "But that's just the sort of information a bigmouth would have, right off the top of its pointy head, isn't it?"

"Yeah, c'mon, Frank, this isn't helping." Dean uncocked the Colt, spreading his hands out and lifting them. "Not Leviathans."

"How'd you find me?" Frank took a step forward.

"Sam and me were here, a few weeks back," Dean said, forcing himself to keep a level tone.

Frank blinked at him, then jerked the barrel toward a bench to one side. "Knife's there, let's see the colour of your blood."

Glancing at Ellie, Dean tucked the Colt into his coat pocket and walked to the bench. He gave the knife a grimace of distaste, but picked it up, rolling his sleeves up past his wrist.

"Look," he said, nicking the skin on the inside of his forearm. A bead of red stood out against his skin. "Red-blooded American, okay?"

"An' her?" Frank's gaze slid suspiciously over to Ellie.

She slid the Sig into the holster under her coat and held out her hand for the knife. Dean passed it to her, half his attention on Frank as she pushed her sleeve up and made a similar small nick on her forearm. Blood trickled down to her wrist, bright red against her pale skin.

He took the knife from Ellie and turned back to Frank, lifting a brow. "Your turn."

"What? I'm not –"

The Colt was back in Dean's hand in an eyeblink, levelled at the older man, the click as he cocked it loud in the silent room. "Prove it."

Frank's face screwed up. "Oh, alright!"

He eased the hammers back on the shotgun, and tucked it under his arm, taking the knife and wincing as he made a small cut on the back of his wrist. He held it up as blood leaked from the fine line.

"Happy?"

"Not really the right word," Dean said, uncocking the Colt and shoving it back into pocket. "But since we're all now good friends here – what've you found out?"

Frank stared at him, his expression affronted. "It's been, like, three days!"

"It's been two weeks!" Dean snapped back at him.

"It has?"

"Tell me we didn't hand over fifteen large to you to get a donut, Frank," Dean said, taking a step toward him.

Frank glanced at Ellie and shrugged. "These things take time, you can't just rush –"

"Frank, did you get anything from the numbers?" Ellie asked, cutting him off.

"Maybe," Frank allowed, turning back to the interior door. "Come on."

Dean waited for Ellie, muttering from the corner of his mouth, "Guy's one step away from the tinfoil hat –"

Ahead of them, Frank's voice rose. "I heard that."

Ellie smiled. "Paranoia's a reasonable response when everyone's out to get you."

Scowling, Dean followed her through Frank's kitchen, bare and covered in dust, and into what might've been a dining room, once.

Every wall was covered in metal rack shelves, and every shelf held hardware. Behind the shelving, copper wire mesh had been fastened to the walls, to the ceiling and floor, barely visible, but discernible in the odd sensation he felt as he walked into the room.

"Faraday cage," Ellie murmured. "Cuts out electrostatic and electro-magnetic transmission."

"Those numbers you gave me turned up bupkis," Frank said, setting the shotgun down on the desk and dropping into a worn leather office chair in front of a bank of screens. "Five digits and I ran every conceivable possibility, with a net return of zero."

Dean opened his mouth to argue and Frank held up a hand. "So, I started to wonder if mebbe our friend, Bobby, lost one of the numbers before he got a chance to hand them over, being as how he was leaking brain matter."

Ellie inched closer to Dean, her hand curling lightly around his arm. He looked away from Frank, mouth thinning out, keeping his thoughts behind his teeth.

"With six numbers, I gotta hit straight away," Frank continued, oblivious to the palpable rage radiating beside him. "Coordinates."

"To what?" Dean asked tightly. He sucked in a deeper breath as he felt Ellie's hand squeeze his arm.

"A field. In Wisconsin," Frank said, tapping a key and bringing up a map on the screen in front of him, an inset visual of the empty lot popping up in one corner of the screen.

"What!?"

"Purchased three months ago by a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Roman Enterprises," Frank added. "They've been surveying for the last week, getting ready to build."

"Build what?" Ellie asked, leaning past Dean to look at the screen.

"Damned if I know!" Frank said. "The planning applications they've put in claim they're building an advanced medical and biotech research centre."

Dean stared at the empty field on the screen. "Huh."

"Was that the only hit you got from those numbers?" Straightening, Ellie looked at Frank.

"No," Frank answered, his tone acerbic. "No, coincidentally, there was another match."

He turned around and hit the keys in a blurrily fast sequence on the keyboard to his right and two more screens lit up, these two sharing the one image. Dean turned to look, brows knitting as he looked at the shape rotating on the black background, looking much a length of curling ribbon, and the tightly packed text below and to one side of it.

"What's that?"

"It's an enzyme, isn't it?" Ellie asked, moving around both men to read the text. "One of the ones involved in autoimmune problems?"

"Correct!" Frank bellowed, stabbing a finger at the screen. "EC GKG.8.95. Its location is described in binary as 454895."

Dean huffed an impatient exhale. "In English!"

"This enzyme is essential in the human body to prevent viral DNA from infecting and destroying cells," Frank told him with a long-suffering look. "The levis don't appear to be able to produce it, even when they copy the human body exactly."

"So … they're getting sick?" Dean asked, frowning at Ellie.

"Not yet," she said, shaking her head as she kept reading. "But they might be susceptible to things that most people aren't – and I would guess they're trying to rectify that situation right now."

"The Martian Solution!" Frank chuckled to himself.

"What?" Dean stared at him.

"In War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells had the Martian invasion defeated by the common cold," Ellie threw over her shoulder. "Since the Martians were undefeatable by any technology mankind could come up with, it was kind of an elegant solution."

She looked at Frank. "Can we get printouts of all of these – and whatever else you've got on Roman's activities?" She pulled a notebook from her bag, snagging a chewed-down pencil from Frank's desk and writing out an email address. She tore off the sheet and handed it to Frank. "And send everything to this address while you're at it."

"Anything else?" he asked, squinting at the paper. "Who's this?"

"A friend," Ellie said. "Someone who also works in a Faraday cage."

"Oh." Frank heaved a sigh and turned back to the screen. "Alright."

A moment later, the printer at the end of the room whirred into life and Ellie walked over to it. Dean glanced at Frank before following her.

"Why would the coordinates be the same as the whatchamacallit?" he asked her, watching as the printer spat out page after page.

"Not a coincidence," Ellie agreed. "Roman's sense of humour? I don't know."

"What now?"

"Ray might have a couple of other angles on this," she said, gathering the pages together as the tray filled up. "I want to send a copy of this stuff to Patrick too, see if it helps with digging through the pre-Christian records they've got."

Putting the pile down on an empty chair, she looked at him. "This is really long-term stuff, you know," she said. "Months to build the facilities they need, more time to do the research, to find a solution – it means we have more time too."

"Unless he finds whatever it is he's digging around for," Dean pointed out.

"Alright," Frank interrupted, swivelling around in his chair. "It's gone. I've got a lock on the frequency they're using for their home-grown surveillance of the lot; got a trace on the county network waiting for updates to Roman's files; and I'm running a search to see if there's any way of tracking Big Pharma on deliveries to folks who happen to be missing EC GKG.8.95 and are medicating for it – there's nothing much –"

"Have you run MPs and MIAs on all the faces going in and out of Roman's head office?" Ellie cut in, pushing a strand of hair back from her face with the inside of her wrist as she wrestled one-handed with the armful of paper from the printer.

"What for?" Frank asked suspiciously. "Roman's keeping a low profile."

"If we can get a list of names and pictures to match, we'll have an easier time keeping ahead of the known levis, Frank," she answered. "They know us, we don't know them …"

"Fine," he said, tone just short of a snap. He swivelled back to the desk. "Where do you want the info sent?"

"Same address as the rest," Ellie told him.

Dean took the load of printouts from her. "Frank, you really think they're onto you here?"

"Be idiots if they weren't," Frank grumbled at the screen. "I got a solution. No one's getting me."

"What solution?"

"Mobile and elusive," the programmer returned over his shoulder, eyes glinting in the glow of the screens. "Now why don't you piss off, the pair of you?"

Letting out an impatient exhale, Dean turned away and walked for the kitchen. "Stay in touch!"

"Bite me!"

Ellie looked back at Frank's hunched-up form. "We'll see you, Frank."

"Not if I see you first," he muttered, staring at the fast-moving numbers that scrolled up in front of him.


	8. Chapter 8 Closure

**Chapter 8 Closure**

* * *

 _ **Redford, Minnesota**_

Ellie followed Dean out of the shielded room and back through the kitchen.

"Guy's crazier than a shithouse rat," Dean muttered, pushing open the back door and taking a deeper breath.

"Well, he's entitled," Ellie told him, her tone soothing. They walked down the drive to the car. "Not a lot of people would've stayed even that sane, after going through what he has."

At the car, Dean stopped, his brows drawing together. "What, years spent finding every scrap of evidence to support every fucking conspiracy theory ever thrown at the internet?"

She leaned forward, taking the load of printouts from him. "Bobby didn't tell you about Frank?"

Dean dug into his pocket for the keys, unlocking the car. "No," he said.

"He did his degrees at MIT, started working for the DOD in '68," she said, heaving the load into the backseat. "Bright future, beautiful wife, two kids."

"And?" he asked, unwillingly. He couldn't imagine Frank with a family.

"And in '71, he came home one day and found them all dead," Ellie told him, kneeling to rummage in her backpack. "Torn apart," she added as she pulled out a couple of jumbo rubber bands and slid them over the printouts. "He found out, a while later, that his family had been watched. Targeted."

"It wasn't a monster?"

"Oh, it was a monster, alright, just not our kind," she said, getting to her feet. "Bobby knew him from serving with him, the two of them were in the Navy. Frank used to be different, he said."

Dean looked at the ground, startling as his phone shrilled in his pocket. He dragged it out, hit the message button, his expression clouding in seconds.

"No – dammit!" He swung around, mouth tightening as he heard the messages his brother had left for him. "That's not right, Sammy–"

"What?" Ellie picked up her bag.

"Sam. He's – it's a vetala," he said, thumbing the speed dial for his brother and lifting the phone to his ear.

Ellie waited, watching frustration and fear-laced anger flicker lightning-fast over his face as he ended the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

"That kid's dad. He was – looks like he was hunting a vetala, but he must've thought it was just one. And Sam doesn't know they hunt in pairs," he said, walking fast around the hood of the car. "He's got Dad's journal, but the one Dad and Jim took down was working alone."

"He's gone after Chambers?" Ellie asked, sliding into the passenger seat as he reached the driver's door. "And now he's not answering."

"Yeah." The car started easily.

"What do you want to do?"

He gusted out an exhale, shaking his head. "Have to start with the kid," he said, twisting around to look behind them. "Sam followed whatever leads the dad had."

"He's in Kansas, isn't he?" She braced herself as he reversed down the drive and spun the wheel.

"Yeah. Dodge City."

"Which way are you going?"

"Uh, Nebraska, I think," Dean said, calculating routes, times, fuel as he hit the accelerator and the car leapt forward. He chewed on the inside of his lip, hands clenched around the wheel. "I – he doesn't know –"

"I know. You can drop me at Des Moines," Ellie said. "I have to get another car anyway."

"What?" He sent a sideways glance at her, frown reappearing.

"You have to get Sam, Dean," she said, her voice firm. "I've got to get this stuff to Ray and Patrick, and I need to get another car, find a new base, get myself organised."

"You were gunna stay –"

She smiled. "Until you got sick of me – or until you got another job," she reminded him.

"I'm not sick of you."

"No, but you've got a job, and so do I," she pointed out, drawing in a breath. "And, it wouldn't hurt either of us to get a few things straight after the last few days."

He opened his mouth and snapped it shut, his stomach tightening. A few things straight? The fuck did that mean?

As if she'd heard the thought – as if he'd said it out loud – she turned to him. "This stuff – you know, what happened in Spokane – it's –" She stopped and from the corner of his eye, he saw her rub the inside of her wrist against her temple. "It's coming back and I'm not –"

"Ellie – we could – I don't know – figure it out –" he said, not even sure of what he was suggesting.

"We could," she cut in, giving him a faint smile. "If we had time. Which we don't." She looked at the pile of paper on the back seat.

He stared through the windshield, noting the approaching signs and signalling right without thinking about it. They never got time. Wasn't that his biggest problem as well? Sam didn't know what the hell he was dealing with. His cell was going to voicemail and he hadn't returned any of his messages. He didn't know what'd happened to his brother, sure as shit didn't want to look at the worst-case scenarios, trembling there at the tip of his brain, but there was no way he wasn't going to find out.

"I'll catch up with you as soon as I can," she said, turning to look out the window.

An exhale trickled between his teeth, and Dean wanted to veto that suggestion. He'd been caught that way before. _Just a couple of weeks_ and _I'll catch up with you_. Great fucking chunks of time when she was gone and he went in circles.

"Maybe you're right."

Even as he said it, the words tasted like bile. There was no time, there was no choice, but it felt like he'd let something go without even trying. Knowing she wouldn't see it that way didn't take away that feeling.

* * *

Ellie stared out at the passing scenery. There'd been a note of resignation in his voice, flat and dull and she wondered if she should stay, try and hold it all off while they found Sam.

Leaning her temple against the glass, she wasn't sure she could. The pressing urgency of getting Frank's information to those who might find exactly what they needed in it, the need to get herself grounded again, organised again … the low-grade agitation was something that wouldn't help on a job, might even cause mistakes otherwise avoided.

There weren't many tricks with vetala, she told herself. Despite their strength and the venom, they weren't that hard to kill. Silver to the heart took care of it. They were harder to find, most of them keeping their kills discreet and moving on when they'd been in a place long enough.

So long you knew they hunted in pairs.

She grimaced at the thought of Sam going into a situation he hadn't been prepared for. Far, far, far down her list of priorities, there was an idea to help hunters in just this kind of situation. It was as distant a dream now as it'd been five years ago.

"Dean, do you want me to come alo–"

"No," he said, his profile dark against the bright fields behind him. "No, you're right, you, uh, got a lot to do," he added, the edge gone from his voice. "We can catch up somewhere down the track. I can take care of this."

It wasn't harsh enough to be a brush-off, she thought, turning back to the windshield, the beginnings of a headache building up in the tension at the back of her neck.

She didn't think she could explain. Not clearly enough, how much of her life seemed to have no foundations now.

* * *

 _ **Des Moines, Iowa**_

"Here good?" Dean asked, pulling into the kerb beside the brightly coloured banners and flags marking the truck dealership.

Ellie nodded. "Yep, thanks."

She reached for her pack and opened the door, twisting back. "Be careful."

He forced himself to grin at her, lifting a shoulder in a one-sided shrug. "Do what I can."

Watching her slide out of the car, he wanted to say something else, but he didn't know what. Didn't matter right now what he wanted or even what she wanted. They both had things they had to do.

"Ellie –?"

She turned around, her expression shadowed by the roof of the car. "Yeah?"

"Uh … nothin'," he said, dropping his gaze. "Uh, just, you know, stay off the radar."

"Do what I can," she replied, and he glanced up, seeing her smile.

The door closed with a soft clunk and he slouched in his seat, twisting to watch her walk into the dealership. She'd get something ordinary. Something utilitarian and anonymous, he knew. She was good at hiding in plain sight.

He started the engine when she disappeared through the darkly-tinted doors and pulled out. It was four o'clock and he had another three hours to go to get to the address Ray'd pulled for them.

* * *

Walking into the dealer's office, Ellie tried to roll some of the tension out of her shoulders and corral her thoughts. It wasn't a mistake to leave him. He could handle himself and anything that came along. The insistent tone of the thought rang hollow. Besides, she added, attempting for some level of unemotional logic, they were out of sync, balancing on a precipice, neither of them able to do their jobs properly while the other was around. The last few days had turned a lot of things upside down and inside out and it would be better for both of them if she could deal with the effects.

"Help you, ma'am?"

She looked up at the smiling young man in front of her and nodded. "I'm looking for a good, used truck."

"Well, ma'am, that's all we got," he said, swinging his arm out in a generous gesture to encompass the entire yard. "I'm Bob, lemme show you some of our best today."

Following him back into the sunlit yard, Ellie tried to pay attention to Bob's spiel, her gaze inspecting and rejecting his line up without the need for much thought. She stopped when she saw the plain white GMC Canyon sitting off to one side.

"Let's look at that," she said, interrupting his flow.

"You have a good eye for a truck, little lady," Bob said, switching direction. "This fine vehicle has had just one owner. It's the 2009 model, 3.7L, 226 cu in with a manual transmission – oh, is that a problem –?"

Ellie shook her head. "No, that's a preference."

His patter washed over her as he popped the hood, and she scanned the engine for the model's known wear and tear problems. A few hours to get to Yure and Kasha's place in Omaha. They would be able to send all the information to Patrick and Ray. She debated the idea of staying with them, for a night maybe. It would be another two days to get Montana.

* * *

 _ **Dodge City, Kansas**_

Dean parked the Impala on the street, gaze idling over the building as he walked up the sidewalk and into the apartment's lot. He glanced at the paper in his hand and zeroed in on the closest set of external stairs.

Ray had pulled everything on the number Sam'd sent, somehow coming up with not only an address, but a copy of the damned rental contract and half the guy's personal details. Probably all fake, but still … Dean hadn't missed his brother's expression, half-relief, half-jealousy, at the wealth of information the Florida geek had found.

Lee Harper, forty-eight years old, single father, widowed. A daughter, listed as Kristen Harper, fourteen-years old, attending Dodge City High School for the last three months. There was only one Lee in Bobby's address book. Lee Chambers and a cell number. Sam'd tried that. It'd gone to voicemail after two rings. With Chamber's real name, finding out more had been easy.

As he gripped the peeling metal balustrade and started to climb, Dean fleetingly wished that detail hadn't been so readily available. He didn't want to look into the eyes of the kid who was waiting in the apartment above, knowing what he knew.

Chambers had been a real estate salesman in Cincinnati. He'd come home early one day, a promised date with his wife, only to find her in their bedroom, dead, in several pieces and being eaten. His three-year old daughter had been hiding beneath the bed, having seen it all.

Bobby's notes were brief, but succinct. Chambers had attacked the creature, futilely attempting to stab it to death. It was his wife who'd made its defeat possible, however. Alison Chambers had apparently thrown everything she could get her hands on at the creature, and when the nail-polish remover that'd soaked into its shirt had gotten too close to a lit candle during the fight between desperate man and infuriated monster, the rugaru had gone up like a torch.

Dean stopped in front of the apartment door, hands shoved deep into the coat's pockets and stared at the dusty concrete floor. Was that luck, he wondered bleakly? Or would luck have spared them the ordeal from the beginning? Who the fuck knew?

Checking the number on the door, he rapped hard, trying to clear his head. Chambers had been hunting now for eleven years, according to Bobby's notes. The girl had to have some kind of information he could use.

* * *

 _ **I-80W, Iowa**_

Ellie stared at the signs advising the approach of Omaha, her fingers clenched around the leather-wrapped wheel. It'd taken less than an hour to get through the paperwork on the truck and she'd only spent another hour in Des Moines, transferring her gear to the new pickup, grabbing a fast meal at a diner and checking the route to Thompson Falls.

She'd been driving now for an hour and a half, and the closer she got to Nebraska, the more her nerves sparked and twitched, the slight feeling of uneasiness she'd felt when Dean'd pulled away growing insidiously into a more concrete feeling of anxiety.

All the logical, sane arguments weren't flying, and the choice was coming up fast. From Omaha she'd be heading north then west, if she kept going to Montana. Or she could turn south, cut across to Kearney and then down to Dodge.

There's no earthly reason he'd be in trouble, she reminded herself, for the hundredth time in the last fifty miles. He was going in wary, prepared, eyes open for the slightest trap or problem.

Ahead, a cluster of exit signs were grouped at the turn off for the 80, and she moved right without thinking about it, following the exit to Omaha, already pulling up the memories to get to the bypass.

She'd get there, she thought disparagingly, and he'd be fine, the job done, Sam safe, and he'd either think she couldn't stay away or that she'd mistrusted his abilities. Neither prospect would be likely to elicit a good response from him.

* * *

 _ **KS-23, Kansas.**_

"Sam went to college? I thought you said your dad was a hunter?"

In the darkness of the car, Dean twitched. He didn't want to be having this conversation, didn't want to have this kid riding shotgun on the way to something that was likely to turn out bloody and messy, didn't want any of it, period.

"He was. We were. Sam quit. Went to college," he machine-gunned at her, hoping it would shut her up.

It seemed to, he realised a second later, snapping a sideways glance at her. She stared through the windshield, face barely visible in the dim light from the dash, chewing on the inside of one cheek. She was small for fourteen, still carrying the soft, rounded outlines of childhood. Pale skin, long dark hair pulled back into a thick ponytail, dark eyes that gave nothing away.

"You could too," he added grudgingly, wondering if it would make a difference. There were outs, for some people. Before it all got too deep and too many things had happened. "Go to college. Become a hunter slash whatever-you-wanna-be."

The image conjured in his head brought a very faint quirk to the side of his mouth.

"How did that work?" Krissy asked, turning. "How'd he deal with worrying about you and his dad?"

He sucked in a deep breath, leaning back. "Uh, he did want he wanted to do. What he felt was important," he told her. "You should ask him."

She sniffed and glanced away. "I don't think I could leave my dad like that. He needs me."

A sharp, instinctive response twanged through Dean's nerve-endings like a misfingered chord. "No, he doesn't. He'll do just fine without you. Probably better 'cause he won't have to worry about you."

"You don't know that!"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Trust me. I do."

He waited for the question he didn't want to answer, and within a moment it came.

"How come you didn't go to college?"

"Didn't want to," he answered, turning it over in his head. It was the truth, he hadn't wanted to do anything but hunt with his father, kill the bad things, protect people and make their lives safer. It'd taken riding with his brother again to make him question those feelings. Make him wonder about what else he might've done. He hadn't realised there might've been other choices.

"Maybe I won't want to, either," Krissy said.

Letting out a slow exhale, Dean nodded. "Maybe you won't. At least think about it, make sure you got that option."

In his headlights, the highway was a straight black stretch, faded white lines lighting and disappearing behind them. Familiar as the sound of the black car, one of thousands, identical in their uniformity, taking him back and forth across the country.

There really hadn't been any other choice back then. Even if his father hadn't needed him, he wouldn't have left. Couldn't've. Their life was all he knew and even when Sam'd left and half of what he'd held onto had fractured away, he still couldn't've imagined doing anything else. Somewhere deep, resonating in bone and blood, the purpose had been there.

"How long have you been doing this?" Krissy's question was soft.

"Long enough," he said.

"You must be good, to still be alive."

It wasn't a question. He glanced at her, one brow lifting.

"Well," she said, waving a hand vaguely. "You're pretty old. My dad said people don't get old in this job, unless they're really good."

He swallowed his indignation and the desire to argue that point with her. At fourteen, twenty seemed old. At her age, he'd never thought he'd live to see thirty.

"Your dad's right," he agreed noncommittally.

* * *

 _ **US-56, Kansas**_

Ellie tilted her watch, reading the time from the light of the dash. Another hour and she'd be in Dodge. She refocussed her gaze on the road, letting the truck's speed increase.

" _We did meet, Ellie, of course we did." Her aunt's voice had been uncharacteristically gentle, her expression guarded. "You were probably too young to remember, but I spent a weekend with you and your father and mother, in that house in Missoula."_

 _She hadn't remembered. The idea of her fierce, patrician aunt in the old house didn't ring any bells at all._

 _Vivian picked at the lace-edged shawl sitting over her knees, her gaze drawn to the restless fingers. "I wanted to make sure my brother was happy," she'd continued. "It wasn't what I'd expected, that relationship. Not at all. But he seemed to be happy."_

" _I was more worried about you."_

Blinking at the memory, Ellie's hands closed around the wheel. She couldn't remember when they'd had that conversation. Vivian had asked her, from time to time, what she could remember about Missoula, about her parents. It'd all been vague and she hadn't thought about it. Her present had been full and much more interesting.

A sign flashed by, advising that Dodge was another twenty miles.

Had her aunt seen the way she'd manipulated her memories, she wondered? Seen it and debated on whether it was a good or bad thing to let her remember the past however she'd liked? It was hard to believe. Her aunt had been a staunch advocate of facing up to the truth and fear, head-on and in full battle mode.

Shifting back against the seat, she frowned at the road. Maybe they hadn't wanted her. Maybe that'd even been apparent to everyone who'd known them. It didn't mean anything, or make any difference to what she'd decided to do. She was the same person she'd been last week or last year.

She'd told Dean that they'd been too wrapped in each other to want anything else. Living and dying together. Not a very palatable truth, but no less true for that.

 _The only person you can rely on is yourself._

Had Viv told her that or had Michael?

* * *

 _ **Colby, Kansas**_

Dean slumped in the driver's seat, watching the parking lot and wondering uncomfortably if he'd been too hasty in letting Ellie take off. Beside him, the girl sat fidgeting with something in her lap, her gaze skipping between the diner's lit windows and the lot's parked rigs.

At the rear of the semi parked closest to the diner, a leggy brunette in a micro-skirt and close-fitting vinyl jacket stood talking to the driver, her posture inviting as she flirted with the buttons of her shirt. The driver leaned against the side of the truck, one hand digging in his back pocket as the woman sidled closer.

"You see that?" the girl asked and he leaned sideways, looking past her. The leggy brunette had disappeared, along with the truck driver. From the diner, a blonde waitress walked fast across the lot, her gaze rabbiting around. She stopped at the rig and climbed into the cab.

"What's she doing?"

Dean watched the blonde start the truck, and back it up slowly, manoeuvring around until she was facing the driveway. "Getting rid of the evidence."

He started the car, the engine rumbling. The truck's lights splashed over them as it bumped down the drive and turned right. Dean waited until it was a few hundred yards down the road before he flicked on the lights and pulled out of the lot, idling down the drive and turning right as the truck made a left two blocks down.

"Where's she going?"

"Hopefully, to the same place they've been stashing all their vics," Dean muttered, giving the truck plenty of time to get around the corner and pick up speed before he made the turn himself. "Shut up, will ya."

He flicked off the lights as he made the turn to follow, the occasional streetlights providing more than enough to see by. Ahead, the truck clanged and groaned in the low gears, travelling another six or seven blocks before it turned again.

Slowing as he passed the chainlink fence that surrounded the big, mostly open lot, Dean noticed the run-down appearance of the place. For Lease signs hung along the sagging fence, a couple of slightly newer-looking For Sale signs leaning dispiritedly out from the open gates, suggested it'd been empty and unused for a while. He stopped at the drive and cut the engine.

In the silence, he heard the truck's engine, idling somewhere behind the closest building, echoing faintly between two walls. He tapped his thumb against the wheel.

"What are you waiting for?" Krissy squirmed in the seat next to him. "They went in there."

"Mmm-hmmm."

She blew out an explosive exhale and reached for the door-handle and Dean's arm snapped out, grabbing her wrist.

"My dad's in there!"

"Yeah, so we're going to take it slow and not get him or my brother killed," he said. "Old hunter, remember?"

"They might not have that time," Krissy snapped, twisting back to the door.

"They won't have it if we do this wrong."

"There's two of us – we'll take them by surprise –"

"Jesus," Dean groaned, starting the engine and making a slow turn through the gate.

"You ever work with your dad?" he asked as the car bumped over the broken concrete and he eased it alongside the closest warehouse, the building's deep shadow extending out past the corner.

She swung around, eyes narrowing a little. "Sure. 'Course."

Dean smiled. "I mean, work – not shooting at cans in the woods."

He'd been nine on his first salt 'n burn. Holding the light so his father could see what he was doing in a cemetery that hadn't been used for fifty years; the headstones leaning this way and that, making him think of dirt-encrusted animated bodies digging themselves out. He'd been scared and excited and filled with a headache-inducing tension to do everything right.

The nose of the car protruded slightly beyond the corner and he could see the back of the rig, the rear doors ajar and the black square of an open door in the building next to it. They'd taken the latest victim inside.

"I help him all the time," Krissy said flatly. "What's your point?"

"You're gonna be sitting this one out," Dean said, straightening.

"No." She stared at him. "No, I'm not. I've been preparing for this my whole life."

He doubted that, but shrugged anyway. "Training's one thing. Doing? That's a whole other animal."

"You don't know anything about me," she hissed. "You don't know what I've seen!"

"I know you're a liability," he said, his tone neutral. "To me and, once I've found them, to your father and my brother."

For a moment, he thought she was going to try to hit him, her body tense and shaking, then she turned slowly away, her shoulders slumping.

"They're probably already dead."

If he hadn't been expecting it, the flat, dry tone might've chilled him. "You don't know that."

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "It's been days. Probably just a pile of dead meat." Turning around, she added, "People die. I've seen it. I watched my mother torn apart, watched that thing eat her, right in front of me."

He studied her. It was a good act, but it wasn't real. She clenched her hands together, probably to stop him seeing the tremble in them. Her pulse slammed away at the base of her throat and her tongue flicked over her lips, betraying their dryness. Had he ever told his father – or Sam? – what he thought he'd remembered, that night in the roaring of flame and flickering light? He didn't think so.

"Then you don't need to see any more."

She spun away, her hand flashing for the door handle and he leaned over, snagging her wrist and pulling her toward him, the click-click of the cuffs snicking around her wrist, the other one around the wheel, ludicrously loud in the silence.

"You bastard!"

"Yeah." He smiled humourlessly. "Hand it over."

"What?"

"The pick set you're carrying," he said, gesturing at her jacket. "You don't want me to go looking for it."

Another frustrated huff and her free hand slid beneath the jacket, tugging at the slim leather case in the inside pocket.

"You're making a mistake," she said as she passed it to him. "I can help you."

He tucked the case into his coat and opened the driver's door, glancing back at her. "What you can do to help me is to stay here, nice and quiet."

* * *

 _ **KS-23 N, Kansas**_

Ellie watched the few lights of Gove disappear in the side-mirror and put her foot down on the gas pedal again, the pickup's speed working up to eighty.

The apartment had been empty when she'd arrived, but not entirely uninformative. In one of the two bedrooms, the back of the closet had held a few shreds of paper, the corner of a map, and the metal trash basket in the bathroom held a pile of ashes. For whatever reason, all the information related to the hunter's case on the vetalas had been burned. The girl wasn't there. And neither was Dean.

She'd pulled out her phone, swearing softly when his cell had gone straight to voicemail. She'd told herself it wasn't necessarily bad news. He might've left it in the car. Might've turned it off to avoid giving away his position. It didn't mean anything, in and of itself. Sam's was still off. The cell number she had for Chambers was also off.

It'd taken a few minutes of forced breathing to remember the second cell number; the one Ray'd tracked down the apartment block with. It'd been on. Ray had been able to give her a location, at least. If the phone stayed on until she got there, she could narrow it down using the local towers for triangulation.

It was a big if.

 _You're panicking for no reason_ , she told herself and tried to believe it. He was the best hunter in the field she'd ever known, cold and clear when the action was running and not prone to self-doubt until it was all over. He would be able to handle anything that came his way, his gift for improvisation unequalled.

 _If he were allowed to_. That thought snuck in past her defences. Sam was the most potent leverage anyone needed to control the elder Winchester. He'd never give up but if it came down to it, he would insert himself between any threat and his little brother.

The pickup's speed surged up to ninety, the diesel working hard and she leaned forward, unconsciously urging the machine faster.

 _It would be fine. He would be fine_. She was rocketing toward Colby for no real reason, just a feeling, one that would prove unfounded. In the back of her mind, some part of her laughed, deriding her attempts to fool herself.

* * *

 _ **Colby, Kansas**_

Dean slid through the narrow gap in the wire cage and ducked down, gaze scanning the open and lit space in front of him. It'd been an auto supply store or a chop-shop, he decided, taking in the bolt holes where the hoists had been and the scattering of filters, belts and parts, hanging from the wire cages and over the shelves. A few benches still held cans of grease and oil, a couple of hydraulic trolley jacks pushed under them, their steel handles left lying on the grease-soaked tops.

Sam was bound to one chair, head listing to one side, a blood-soaked and dirty white dressing stuck to his neck. A few feet away, a second man was tied to another chair, head drooping, his skin pale and waxen under the single, harsh overhead globe. About six feet from him, the trucker was trussed into a third chair, head tipped back and out of it, Dean guessed.

The two women walked into view, weaving around the trucker with a lazy, predatorial grace as they spoke to each other in low tones. Closer to Dean, the brunette was tall, skinny, her chunky platform heels clocking hollowly on the concrete floor. Her monster partner was a slightly shorter blonde, considerably more rounded in tight-fitting jeans, shirt and jacket; older too, he thought as he studied them. The one calling the shots.

Silver to the heart, he thought, easing around the shelving in front of him. Should've been a piece of cake. If they hadn't used up the rounds in the trunk on the skinwalkers four weeks earlier. Should've been able to stand back in the shadows and pop 'em both, if not for that.

On his belt, the long, tapered knife hung, a reassuring weight. The blade was silver and it would do the job. Just a bit trickier with two.

What he needed was something with reach, 'cause getting out of their grip once they had a hold was damned near impossible. He slipped into the darkness behind the shelf, moving closer to the monsters and their victims.

He flinched as something crashed near the outer door, head snapping around to watch the vetalas' reactions. A look passed between them, then the brunette swung away, striding out, heading right for him. His hand closed around a steel bar on the shelf, and he stepped out of the shadows, saw her eyes widen and then roll back as the bar slammed into her forehead with his swing, knocking her off her feet. She hit the floor on her back with a muffled thud.

The blonde covered the distance between them in an eyeblink, giving him no time to get the bar up again. Her hands bunched in his coat, shaking him like a fucking maraca, no time to even swing before she'd lifted his greater weight off the floor and the next thing he knew was hitting the wire cage across the room with his back, the lack of give in the steel frame sending a bolt of pain through him from his shoulders to the base of his spine.

He fell to the floor, crashing painfully onto his hands and knees, knuckles smarting from landing on them with the bar still in one fist. Raising his head, she was already there, on him, one hand wrapped around his throat, the other fisted in his collar, his air cut off as she dragged him to his feet. He didn't think he'd survive round two, and he rammed the end of the bar up blindly. It hit the underside of her jaw, punching through with a wet feeling that tingled in his fingers, her scream cut off as she toppled backwards. He threw himself on top of her and dropped the bar, one hand pinning her head to the concrete, the other pulling the silver knife from his belt.

"Daddy!"

The high-pitched squeal echoed against the hard surfaces, and Dean froze, registering a blur of denim and plaid in his peripheral vision as the girl shot by, heading for her father. He didn't have even time to let loose a string of mental invective as he saw the brunette come to, her hand flashing out and catching the girl's legs, bringing her down in a sprawling tangle of flailing limbs.

"Don't you touch her!" the brunette shrieked. She scrabbled up the girl's body, one arm snaking around her neck, twisting both of them to face him. Krissy's face contorted in pain as her head was forced to one side. "I'll break her neck!"

It took less than a heartbeat to calculate his odds and he rocked back on his heels, hands spread wide, the knife blade tilted up.

"Don't."

"Get off her!" the dark-haired vetala hissed, staring at her sister's supine form. "Drop the knife and back away!"

 _Sonofabitch_.

He set the knife on the floor and straightened up slowly.

"Let the kid go."

"No," the brunette said, watching the blonde roll onto her side and climb to her feet. "No, I don't think so."

"You fucking crazy!" Chambers had regained consciousness and stared at Dean, eyes lucid and accusing. "You brought my daughter – here?"

The brunette stood, pulling the girl's weight up easily. She kept Krissy in front of her; one hand locked under the girl's jaw, pushing her head sideways, the other arm wrapped across her torso. Krissy whimpered, struggling to get a breath past the compression of her throat and diaphragm.

"Don't let her go," the blonde snapped, turning to face him as she fingered the hole under her chin. She pulled her hand away, studying the blood that coated it for a long moment. When she raised her gaze back to him, her expression pinched into a narrow-eyed glare. "You're going to pay for this."

He was sure he would. He couldn't get to both of them. Should've cuffed the girl properly and left her in the trunk.

The blonde took a step toward him and he stepped to one side, watching for any kind of tell that would give him an advantage in the first second of engagement. One-on-one, they were faster and stronger. His knife was lying on the floor, three feet away.

Behind the blonde, the other vetala shuffled backward, yanking the child with her. He saw the brunette smile, her grip relaxing. She bent her head, cheek tucked against Krissy's as she whispered something to her.

Dean's gaze met the girl's. Her dark brown eyes focussed on him, one corner of her mouth dimpling in a faint smile. Her hand moved, incrementally slipping under her coat. And he knew what she was going to do.

 _No, goddammit! They're too fucking strong!_

Nerve and muscle twitched violently as he repressed his instinct to act, to stop her. He forced his attention back to the blonde, teeth grinding at the effort it took. The girl's inexperience could get her killed in the next few seconds. He couldn't stop it. Couldn't waste the distraction that would give him the chance to take out the blonde.

Krissy drew the knife out from beneath her coat, leaning back into the brunette, keeping her hand low. When she swung around, the overhead light glanced from the bright silver blade as it began its downward plunge.

The vetala's hand was a blur as it caught her wrist, a shrill peal of laughter raucous as long nails drove into the nerves at the base of the thumb, and the blade clattered on the floor.

"Krissy!" Chambers shouted, his voice weak and hoarse.

The blonde flicked a glance behind her and Dean dropped, diving sideways, fingers curling around the haft of his knife and scooping it up as he rolled over and onto his feet. Every fraction of a second fragmented into discrete snapshots. She was turning back to him and he had one chance. A stride and he was next to her. Her eyes widened.

"Krissy–!" Chamber's despairing cry rose in pitch.

Thunder shook the room as the knife slid between the blonde's ribs and entered her heart. Not thunder, he thought a second later, twisting the blade deeper. Gunshot … _what the–_

The blonde's skin began to darken and crumble, cracking off in pieces, her hair shrivelled and greyed, falling from her skull in snarls and clumps.

Dean let the carcass slide off his blade, swinging around to see Krissy standing statue-still in the centre of the open workshop, her mouth open, her body trembling. Along the side of her neck a small bloom of red stood out against white skin.

At her feet, the brunette was going through the same process of rapid ageing and decomposition, puffing outward in a small explosion of ash when the girl took an unsteady step back.

"What the–" Sam muttered, swaying against the ropes holding him to the chair as he peered around the room.

Dean pivoted in place, eyes narrowed as he scanned the interior, then widening when Ellie stepped through the tattered curtain of plastic sheeting that hung over the doorway at the end of the room, her SIG Sauer held loosely in her hand. Her gaze met his.

In her eyes, he saw too many things – apology, contrition, a baffling wariness and something else, something that thrummed through him, filled him with a weirdly reassuring energy that vanished almost immediately.

"Sorry I was late," she offered, returning the gun to the pancake holster at the small of her back and moving to Lee's chair. Pulling out her knife, she cut through the ropes holding him. "Took a little time to find you."

Dean's breath gusted out, mouth quirking up to one side. "Yeah, well, all things considered, I guess I can live with that."

He walked to Sam's chair and reversed the knife, slicing down through the ropes binding his brother. Putting a hand on Sam's shoulder, he kept him in place as he looked at the bloody mess of his brother's neck. "How much they take?"

"Not that much," Sam said, batting at the restraining hand and using the arms of the chair to push himself to his feet. "Lee needs a hospital."

"The hell you bring my daughter here for?" Lee barked weakly at Dean, twisting away from Ellie as she lifted the rough, blood-soaked dressing on his neck. "You almost got her killed!"

He rose clumsily and tottered to one side, lack of blood and circulation taking his balance and nearly sending him to the floor. Grabbing his arm, Ellie held him upright and in one place as he continued to glare at the hunter.

"She didn't leave me a choice," Dean said, turning a flat stare on the girl. "She was in the car, cuffed to the wheel, when I left her."

Krissy hurried to her father, scowling at Dean as she put her arm around her dad, ducking under his arm. "I wasn't going to sit out there like some dumb ki–"

"Maybe we can do this later?" Ellie interrupted, moving around Lee and lifting his arm over her shoulder. "When he's not so likely to bleed out mid-argument?"

* * *

Dean glanced through the gap in the sheeting surrounding his brother, noting without surprise that Sam's eyes were closed as the blood bag gradually emptied its contents into his veins. A little under two quarts, the doctors had said, something just short of a third of his body's supply. Lee had been worse, more than half taken. He was lying in the next bed, the blood supplemented by a couple of other bags hanging from the wheeled stand next to him.

He turned away from the beds, his gaze wandering down the hall to the ER's intake counter. Ellie stood there, filling in forms and coming up with some kind of cover story to explain the puncture wounds and blood loss. He didn't want to know the details.

Krissy leaned against the wall to his left, head bowed and hands thrust deep into her coat's pockets, tracing patterns on the linoleum floor with the toe of her sneaker. She glanced up at him, dark circles like bruises under her eyes.

"You should get some shut-eye too," he said, stepping back to join her against the wall as another orderly barrelled past him.

"You still mad at me?" she asked, her gaze dropping.

"Yeah, I am," he said, his tone mild. "What you did was dumb. You could've been killed, could've gotten your dad killed … Sam … me. I told you, training isn't doing."

"I didn't know she'd be that strong." The girl's mouth turned down, lower lip protruding in a childish pout.

He sighed, rubbing at his brow with the back of his hand. "They're all that strong. Much stronger than a man. Faster. Better senses. It's not enough to think you're ready. You have to know what you're doing, know all about 'em."

"How'd you survive then?"

Glancing down at her, he tapped his temple and said, "Smarter."

She gusted out a huff of disbelief. "So you're sayin' you could've taken the two of them on your own?"

For a disorienting moment, the situation came back to him, clear and vivid. He'd been less than a second from driving the knife into the blonde when Krissy'd run in. If she hadn't, he thought he might've had to wrestle with the other one, as it'd regained consciousness, but the result would've been the same. Monsters relied on their strength too much, most of the time.

"Yeah." He lifted a shoulder at her. "I am."

Tucking her chin against her chest, she made a disparaging noise in her throat and stared at the floor.

It was apparent that her dad had kept her out of a lot of the stuff he was doing, he thought, watching conflicting emotions flicker over her face, no matter what she'd told him.

She was pissed that her plan hadn't worked, not even thinking about how bad it could've gone. If nothing else, John Winchester hadn't left any doubts about why mistakes were made or what'd caused them. He and Sam'd been trained right to the marrow of their bones in thinking through everything. Sometimes even then, some unknown factor screwed it all up. She was also scared, he considered, sliding another quick glance at her. Scared because none of it had been like she'd thought it was gonna be, none of it'd played out the way it had in her head.

Tipping his head back, he stared at the ceiling. If Chambers wasn't going to step out of the life for her, he needed to do something about her knowledge and drumming some strategic thinking into her, some real training so she didn't think some hackneyed TV move was going to work.

"Is Ellie your girlfriend?" Krissy asked, and he blinked, discomforted with both the question and being asked about it.

 _Girlfriend_.

The term, something he related to high school but not since, didn't begin to describe what she was, he thought. There were no words to describe it.

"Uh, something like that," he told the kid finally, his eyes following the direction of Krissy's gaze. Ellie was still haggling with the administration down at the counter, and he recognised the repressed tension in the hunch of her shoulders as she leaned closer to the officious woman.

"How'd she get started?"

He rolled onto a shoulder, stretching out against the ache of the muscles in his back. "You'd have to ask her that, not my story to tell."

"You know, it's all this need-to-know crap … all this … this secrecy," she said, her face screwing up. "That gets you all into trouble in the first place. You can't just answer a simple question?"

Tilting his head to one side, Dean's mouth quirked in acknowledgement. "Guess not."

"Uh!" Her head ducked down again, arms folding over her chest. "You're such a – a guy!"

He laughed at that. "Yeah, I do my best."

"Miss Harper?" The question came from behind them and they turned to see the ward nurse standing there, a clipboard in hand.

"Yeah," Krissy said, pushing back against the wall to stand straight.

"We're moving your father to a room now."

"Um, okay …" Krissy walked past Dean without another glance. "I'll come with."

Dean stepped out of the way as an orderly and the nurse began to push the gurney out of the bay and into the hall.

"How's Sam?"

He turned to find Ellie beside him. "Getting his replacement go-juice. Doc said he'll be fine. Any problems?"

"No," Ellie said. "They're happy to let him go tonight. Lee, they'll be keeping for a couple of days, but the insurance is all in place."

Dean's gaze returned to Sam, reassuring himself that his brother was not going anywhere. He put a hand under Ellie's arm, moving them both down the hall toward the ER's waiting area. "How did you find us?"

"The girl's phone was on and in the car," Ellie said. "Ray got me to Colby and I pinged it when I got close enough."

She turned to him, expression rueful. "I'm sorry I didn't get there a few minutes earlier," she added, nose wrinkling. "I saw her go inside, too late to stop her."

He shook his head. "I forgot about the damned bobby-pins."

"And you call yourself a professional."

"Yeah, well, I had a few other things on my mind," he said, his gaze travelling around the crowded room. "You wanna, uh, get some fresh air?"

"Yeah," she said, looking closely at him. "You know you've got bruises all down your neck? And the side of your face looks like chopped liver?"

He snorted. "Yeah, I know."

Throwing a glance back at the doctors inside, Ellie slowed. "Did they give you anything for that?"

"No," he said, slipping an arm around her and propelling her toward the doors. "C'mon, it's fine."

They walked out, and turned, crossing the ambulance bay. Dean pulled in a deep breath, feeling the creak of bruised ribs and back.

"Why'd you come back?" he asked, when they'd reached a small garden, a single tree surrounded by low, clipped rose hedges.

"Got a bad feeling," she said, stopping next to him.

He chewed on the corner of his lip. He didn't want to argue the reality of that kind of feeling. The girl'd very nearly blown it all to hell.

"You think I gotta hope of convincing Chambers to give up the life and let his kid settle down and have something normal?" he said, leaning back against the hospital's brick wall.

If she was surprised by the left turn, she didn't show it.

"Is that what she wants?"

"Who the hell cares what she wants?" he retorted, huffing out an impatient breath. "It's her dad's responsibility to make sure she makes it, has some – something – some kind of regular life, isn't it?"

When she didn't respond, he turned his head, trying to gauge her thoughts.

She gave a small shrug. "Pushing someone in a direction they don't want to go, and have no interest in, doesn't usually work all that well."

He opened his mouth to argue and closed it again, knowing she was thinking of Sam. Hadn't mattered to Sam what their dad's plans had been. He'd gone his way anyway.

"What happened to them?" Ellie asked.

"Rugaru," he said. "Got the mother."

"How long ago?"

He thought for a moment, his mouth turning down as he answered, "Eleven years."

The small sigh beside him told him what she was thinking. It was nearly all the girl's life, a litany of loss and pain and trying to find a way to get revenge that would never work. He couldn't pinpoint his reasons for wanting to make sure the kid out of the life, other than the glaringly obvious ones.

"You could've done something else," he added. He was uncomfortably aware he wanted her to agree with him. "You had a choice in what you did."

She nodded. "And look what I chose."

 _I like who I am, doing this_ , she'd said. At the time, it'd been so far from the way he'd felt about hunting, it'd been practically incomprehensible. He still didn't understand it, even when he felt it, that certainty that he was doing the right thing.

"Maybe you could – I dunno – uh – just talk to her?" he said, not sure if that would do anything at all. He couldn't just leave it like this. "Convince her that she could, uh, have a fall-back plan or something?"

"Sure, I can try."

His shoulders sagged, the knot of tension he'd hardly been aware of dissolving. Was it just about saving the kid, he wondered? Or her father? Getting someone out?

"Good."

* * *

The hospital's cafeteria was yellow, the long, narrow room eye-searingly bright in the midday glare flooding in through large, uncovered windows. Ellie had been trying to shield her laptop's screen from the glare for ten minutes when she finally gave up, closing the lid and pulling out a notebook from the pack beside her feet.

"Uh, hi."

Lifting her head, Ellie saw the girl standing by the table, strands long, dark brown hair twirled tight around her fingers, her expression guarded.

"Hey, Krissy."

"Um, Dean said I should talk to you."

"Have a seat," Ellie said, moving the notebook and laptop to the other side of the table.

"Thanks." The girl dropped into the empty chair, untangling her fingers from her hair as she squinted at the windows. "Geez, you need sunglasses in here."

"No argument," Ellie agreed, wondering if she should be offering an opening.

"Dean thinks I should quit trying to be a hunter and go to college." Krissy glared at the table top. "He and Sam told my dad to stop hunting, for my sake."

Dean's tact, Ellie thought, wincing inwardly at the girl's pugnacious expression. "Do you want to do something else?"

Krissy shrugged. "How should I know? I'm just a kid. Dean said Sam went to college."

"That's right, he did," Ellie said.

"Said you went too," the girl added, shy curiosity colouring her tone. "Some fancy college."

"Uh, no," Ellie said. "I did most of my learning post-school."

"Jackass!" Krissy bounced in her seat. "I knew he lied to me!"

"Well, he might've thought I did," Ellie suggested. "We've never really talked about it."

"Why'd you start hunting? Something bad happened, huh?"

"Yeah, something bad happened," she said. "I didn't know exactly what. I needed to find out."

"Same as my thing, right?"

"No," Ellie corrected her. "You've got your dad."

"He needs it more'n me." Krissy made a face, swivelling in the narrow plastic chair and drawing her knees up under her chin. "He hates them, all of them."

"I suppose he does." Ellie leaned back, wondering how well Krissy knew her father. "But I'm guessing he loves you more than he hates the monsters. If you wanted to try something else, he'd do his best for you."

"I think it's too late for that," Krissy murmured, picking at the edge of her nail. She lifted her gaze. "For both of us."

"Never too late," Ellie said, shaking her head. "Krissy, it's a short life anyway, and doing … this–" She gestured around the room vaguely. "– that can make it very short. There's no rule that says you can only hunt or only do something else. That's a choice, it's not a given."

"Would you give it up?"

Ellie closed her eyes. If the man she loved wasn't being continually dragged back into worse and worse scenarios. If she wasn't convinced that there was more, lurking under the surface, of Sam's hallucinations and the levis release and everything that'd happened since Dean had made his deal …

"I was never doing this for vengeance," she said instead, opening her eyes and focussing on the girl. There was no way to explain the things she'd learned, the things she felt, somewhere too deep inside to examine, what she'd done and seen and how it'd changed everything. Changed her, it seemed.

Rubbing the inside of her wrist over her brow, she leaned forward. "Vengeance is an impossibility. You can't kill enough to get rid of your grief or the ache of loss. You have to find a different way to deal with it, a way to accept –"

"Dean said he was doing a revenge thing," Krissy interrupted, her eyes hard, startlingly adult in her rounded face.

Nodding, Ellie said, "He's got his own reasons."

"Why is it okay for _him_ but not for me?"

"It's not okay for him, but no one can tell him that. He has to work that one out for himself," she said. He would, sometime. He'd been so close to it before. "Like you have to work out what's more important to _you_ – and your dad is going to have to work out what's most important to him."

The girl ducked her head, her posture tense, and Ellie wondered if anything she'd said would make a difference. At Krissy's age, she'd already made up her mind about what she was going to do. Not, perhaps, the most rational decision for a fourteen-year old, but it was a decision she'd never been able to fully regret. She felt alive – fully alive – every single day.

"You and Dean, you're, uh, together?" Krissy asked, turning back to her.

The question shouldn't have felt so hard to answer, Ellie thought.

"We're … we're trying to be," she said, earning a quizzical look from the girl. Shrugging, she added, "It's not such an easy gig."

"He can be an asshole," Krissy conceded readily.

Ellie snorted. "That's – uh – that's not what I meant."

"Yeah, but he can." The teenager got up, her gaze roaming the room distractedly. She tapped her hand on the table. "Thanks. For talking, I mean. I – I'll think about it. What I want to do."

"Anytime," Ellie said. "Knowing what's out there, it doesn't mean you have the responsibility to deal with it, you get that, right?"

"Is that how you feel?" Krissy asked, and Ellie hid a smile at the girl's percipience. "Like you should?"

"When I started, I was, um, idealistic about hunting," she said. "Took just one near-miss to get that out of my system."

"Dean said he and Sam do it 'cause it's on them to make things right."

Well, he didn't say that in so many words, Ellie thought.

"He has a well-developed sense of responsibility," she said out loud. "Gets him into trouble."

"I can see that."

"One thing, Krissy," Ellie said, gathering up her laptop and notebook. "If you were going to do it, you have to do it fully. That means every kind of training you can find; it means learning everything you can about what's out there – more research than years of school or college, right? It means thinking of everything, before you set a foot out your door."

The girl flushed. "I already got the sermon from Dean."

"Then pay it mind. Nothing else will save your life."

"I, uh, I should probably get back to my dad."

"Krissy?" Ellie closed her pack. "Stay safe. Whatever you want to do, don't forget to keep watch."

"Yeah. Okay."

* * *

Waiting by the ER's doors, Dean studied Sam discreetly from the corner of his eye.

"How you doing?"

"Fair to awful," Sam said, running a hand through his hair and grimacing. "Need a shower."

"Well, I wasn't going to say anything –"

"Then don't."

He smiled, turning away when he saw Ellie and Krissy come out of the cafeteria. He nodded to the girl as Krissy lifted her hand in a small wave, turning left for the elevators, and watched Ellie walk toward him and Sam, hitching her pack more securely over one shoulder.

"Any luck?" he asked as she got close.

"Hard to say," she said. "What about her dad? Is he going to stay put for her?"

Dean glanced at his brother, getting a half-hearted shrug in response. "Maybe. He said it depended on her."

"Well, she seems prepared to think about it all, at least," Ellie told him, following as Sam led them outside. "You told her I went to college?"

"Didn't you?" he asked, looking down at her in surprise.

"God, no." She shook her head. "Barely graduated."

"But – what about the languages and the –" he sputtered, brows drawing together.

"I learned that later," Ellie said. "Just have a bit of a weird thing for it. I haven't got a degree or anything."

She glanced up at his silence, and laughed. "All this time, you thought I'd been to college, _and_ hunted on my own _and_ with Michael? Dean, where the hell did you think I'd find the time for that?"

"I dunno," he said, a touch of defensiveness in his voice. "You just, uh, seemed the type."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Sam's face scrunch up into a sharp wince, and he shot a wary glance at her, wondering if there was something wrong with what he'd said.

She shook her head. "The type."

"Yeah, book-girl," he said, adding an airy hand-wave. "Know-it-all."

"Thank _you_."

"Anytime."

Sam sent them both a weary look as they walked across the lot. "Can we find a motel with a shower and a bed and some food and just chill out for a few hours? Suspend hostilities? Get some rest? Sleep, even?"

He thought he'd been ready for it, but watching her gaze slip away to the truck, he realised he hadn't.

"C'mon, you can stay for a night," he said. "Leave in the morning, all ready to go."

"Guess I can," she agreed, with only a touch of hesitancy. "I'll follow you."

* * *

 _ **Later**_

The differences between sensations had long ago merged and blurred until he couldn't tell if it was sight or sound, taste or touch that sent the tight spirals of pleasure rocketing through him.

Need pulsed in a quickening craving, overwhelming everything else. He was reaching and soaring at the same time, eyes half-opened, each deep thrust seizing his chest somehow, stopping him from being able to breathe. Feeling surged, some incendiary combination of physical and emotional, stripping every wall and barrier, and he lost the last threads of control completely when the molten heat around him started to erupt and spasm, her cry lost in his.

There was no air at all to breathe, but that was okay, that was just fine, he didn't need it. Air was overrated when all he needed was this … this fierce and soothing maelstrom, a storm that shook every last piece tension free and swallowed him whole …

… aftershocks bled out, fizzling and crackling through nerves that were almost too overloaded to register them. He could feel the little huffs of her breath on his neck, slowing down …

… he wasn't any good with words and that was okay too. There were no words needed or wanted. Skin to skin and her arms around him, his lips against the hollow of her temple … he didn't want to talk … just be …

* * *

Ellie stretched out, listening to the even, quiet breaths of the man beside her, rolling against him and feeling his arm curve around her.

The shapeless anxiety that'd filled most of the previous twenty-four hours had gone and the discomforting sense of her past doubled up on her was subdued. If it hadn't been for the very real and still urgent matter of getting Frank's findings to Ray and Patrick, she could've happily stayed here and waited with them until the next job turned up, she thought sleepily.

On cue, Dean adjusted his position, asking, "You going in the morning?"

"Mmm-hmmm."

The room wasn't that dark, the streetlights outside filtering through the thin curtains. She opened an eye as he exhaled, his chest rising and falling beneath her cheek.

"Dean–"

"Yeah," he said, arm closing around her. "No, I know."

For several minutes, the silence lengthened. Filled, she thought, with a load of things neither of them really wanted to talk about, things that couldn't be resolved in a single conversation. Things, she realised with a slight frown, that couldn't even be addressed with the crap that was going on around them right now.

The levis were strengthening their position. If she was going to find a base, she needed it to do it while her assets were fluid, or tracking it would be too easy for them. She still had a few clean sets of ID. She had the feeling that the brothers didn't.

"Did you get a–"

"If Ray cleaned up our–" he started and stopped.

"I was going to ask if got a clean set of identification from Frank?"

He shook his head. "I wanted to find out if Ray'd finished pulling our records out of the databases."

"By now? Yeah," she said, focussing on the faint outline of his cheek and brow. "If you've got a letter drop that's still good, I could get him to send you both a set?"

"Uh, yeah, we gotta box in Akron."

"It'll take a few days," Ellie warned him.

He snorted. "Have to check my schedule, but yeah, I think we can probably make that work."

She yawned. "Use the forum. He's watching it too. Just leave the details."

"Are you, uh, going to be okay?" he asked, his discomfort evident in the hesitation between words. "You know, with what happened?"

"Yeah," she said. "It's strange, having so much come back in one hit. Um, unsettling, you know. But I think it'll be fine."

She thought of the long miles to cover over the next couple of weeks, time alone. A chance to see a piece of her past, maybe even make use of it. As weird as the last few days had been, with all that crashing down, she had the feeling it wouldn't take that long to assimilate it.

Already half-asleep, she barely noticed the man ease beside her, distantly heard his long exhale. It would be better for both of them, in a little while.

* * *

 _ **Morning**_

Dean woke abruptly, hearing the chug-chug of the truck, not having to open his eyes to feel the emptiness of the bed, of the room. He cracked a lid anyway, the digital clock on the nightstand showing 5:05 in the a.m.

The truck's rumble receded, and he listened to it as long as he could, brows drawn together as it disappeared. Gone. Again.

A week, he thought, rolling over and staring at the opposite wall. Maybe two. Three at most. They'd have some new ID, still had plenty of cash. Staying off the grid wouldn't be so fucking hard.

He shouldn't need anyone. Not like this. Not this much. It was a mistake he'd regret, somewhere down the track, when the life took her as well and he had nothing. The thought pushed him into sitting up, running both hands through his hair.

There was no way he could tell himself it wouldn't happen. It might not, but there were no guarantees, no promises that could be made, no deals to be brokered to keep the people he loved safe.

Didn't matter, he told himself, getting to his feet, ignoring the incremental return of tension to his body. He padded barefoot to the bathroom and turned on the shower, hoping the rush of water would drown out his thoughts before they got any further. He stepped back, catching his image in the already-fogging mirror and noted without surprise the bruised look around his eyes had gone. He slept deeper when she was there.

Steam rose above the cubicle and he stepped in. The beat of the water cocooned him, muffling thought and feeling effectively as he leaned straight-armed against the tiled wall.

* * *

 _ **US-400 E, Kansas**_

They were thirty miles out of Dodge, tooling quietly eastwards, the sun still low enough to need the visor, sparkling out of a pale blue sky. Akron was the final destination but for once, there wasn't a particular hurry to get there.

"You alright?" Sam asked, and he glanced at his brother.

"Yeah, fine." Sam looked a lot better for the night's solid sleep and another couple wouldn't hurt. "Thought we'd just take our time, stop somewhere around Dayton tonight, see, uh, if Jeb's old cabin is still there."

"Yeah, okay, but that's not what I meant," Sam said, forehead pleating up. "You alright with, uh, everything else? Um, you know ..."

He did know what his brother was indelicately dancing around. Didn't want to have those thoughts come crashing back. "Yeah."

"Really?"

Shooting Sam an irritable glance, Dean said, "You waitin' for me start playin' love-songs and writin' in my diary, Sammy?"

"No," Sam said, turning away. "I just thought –"

"Well, there's a bad idea."

"Okay. Right. I get it. You're fine."

"Good."

His fingers tightened on the wheel as he stared at the two-lane stretching out endlessly in front of them, thought and feeling churning together. He shot another sideways glance at Sam, relieved to see his brother's attention focussed on the fields and countryside flashing by.

There was nothing to feel bad about. Nothing to be worried about. She had her crap she had to take care of, he had his. They'd meet up, somewhere, in a while.

 _It wouldn't hurt either of us to get a few things straight after the last few days_

She'd wanted to go. Maybe even needed to. Not just for Frank's intel and the rest of it. The past had been dumped on her and some of it, he thought, she hadn't seen coming, hadn't remembered or thought about.

It'd be fine, he told himself, she'd said it would.

And the aching loss and grief he'd felt that had dissipated a lot too, he realised belatedly. He wasn't through, and he wondered if he even wanted to be, with Roman to kill and the mouth-monsters to take down, but the edges weren't cutting into him anymore. The pain was back into what he laughingly thought of as 'manageable'. Maybe, the next time he saw her, he'd even be able to talk about the old hunter.

* * *

 _There is a road, no simple highway_  
 _Between the dawn and the dark of night_  
 _And if you go, no one may follow_  
 _That path is for your steps alone._

 _~ J. Garcia, Robert C. Hunter_


End file.
